Hot Tub Time Machine

Hey, remember the 80s? I do! I was a kid so I was blissfully unaware of how awful they were. My mind was occupied with “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and/or Hulk Hogan at any given moment. Time makes fools of us all. It seems like everything old is new again, because 80s nostalgia has been a major cultural force on the last decade and its not going to end anytime soon. I will leave it to some social scientist to determine why that is, because I sure as hell don’t know. What I do know is I just saw “Hot Tub Time Machine,” and if you’re under 20 this movie will mean nothing to you.

“Hot Tub Time Machine,” has the most self explanatory title ever. Three guys and their young ward go back in time to the 80s and comedy ensues. When you go to a movie like this plot and character are secondary to laughs and jokes. If I buy a ticket to this movie I am expecting to laugh and that’s about it. So the good news is I did laugh. And while it may not be the kind of movie where there’s a constant barrage of jokes, the times I did laugh I laughed really really hard. The jokes are surprising and funny in unexpected ways. The film has a slow start and an awkward end, but the stuff in the middle is gold. That’s the hardest part of telling any story, coming up with what happens in the middle, and this film really should have been all middle. We really don’t need the back story or the resolution. The film is called “Hot Tub Time Machine,” that’s all we need to know, start it there. The four stars of the film are all funny, and they have a believable chemistry. But like I said, who cares right? All you need to know is: was the movie funny? The answer is yes, ‘nuff said.

The flaw of this film is I can’t imagine anyone who’s too young and wasn’t alive twenty years ago appreciating it nearly as much as someone who lived it. The way they get around that is to have a kid character to relate to, but if you are young then you are also going to miss the main theme of the film. Youth is wasted on the young. You can’t know that to be true unless you also have vivid memories of events that happened 20 years ago. If you like laughing then go see this movie, and if you see it and don’t laugh then don’t listen to my comedy recommendations ever again. Also, its good to see the Cobra Kai kid is still alive and working.