I LOVE low comedy. In moments of exaltation, it celebrates the freedom of humans from the will of God and the requirements of nature that the base clown will be ground underfoot. Hot Tub Time Machine wallows in its idiocy with a beautiful, high-concept narrative gag—promoted with the solemn Craig Robinson, showing all necessary Spielbergian awe at the phenomenon. Happily, the phenom is scientifically explained. Citing that explanation would count as a spoiler; but no, it wasn’t all a dream. Three depressed middle-aged men gather for a ski trip reunion. One, Nick (Robinson), is a dog groomer who once harbored some hopes as a musician. The bald-headed satyr Lou (Rob Corddry) has just been rescued from an apparent suicide attempt, which may have just been mere drunken idiocy. The newly broken-hearted Adam (John Cusack) packs up the car with his two old buddies and his 24-year-old nephew, Jacob (Clark Duke), a depressed middle-aged man in training. While hot-tubbing, they’re Jacuzzi-whirled through a time portal to an evening of sex and drugs they spent in the haut-Reagan era. The world of 1986 sees them as if they were young men. Jacob, who rightly believes that he wasn’t born yet and shouldn’t exist, is fading in and out of sight.
Cusack gives the film soul, as in a moment when he is caught, baked on psychedelic mushrooms, writing love poetry. Director Steve Pink previously wrote the script that Americanized High Fidelity; that was the film that launched Jack Black, just as this film is bound to launch Duke, a soft-looking but razor-tongued comedian. Corddry’s comedic timing is murderous, even in spitballed semi-improv moments. Cusack and Corddry do things here that you’re certain you’ll still be laughing about 10 years from now. Hot Tub Time Machine doesn’t get mired in nostalgia jokes, and Pink and company make up for an unkindness done to Chuck Berry by Back to the Future in Robinson’s musical numbers. Speaking of Back to the Future raises the question of how much Hot Tub Time Machine yearns for an idealized past. The film, however, doesn’t completely lionize the 1980s. There is a line that goes, “This isn’t the time of free love, it’s of Reagan and AIDS”—with justice, the script links these two different disasters.
Is this time-travel comedy really about women returning to trad roles? I’m unsure. There isn’t a bad female performance in the film. Lizzy Caplan shows the most spirit as an entertainment reporter coming through town fast. The four men are all walking-wounded types, hurt by women. Adam takes a plastic fork to the face, an incident reflecting the dining-related tragedy that ruined his life when he was a kid. The idea that women control the happiness of men is one kind of respect for their power, but the series of little emasculations is reversed, just like time’s arrow. Sadly, even in the craziest comedies there’s no room for the funny yet soulful woman who might have wanted to see some improvement in her life since the old days. That’s the difference between men and women in this comedic field, as far as female feelings and male feelings go. Comedy is what happens to them; tragedy is what happens to us.
HOT TUB TIME MACHINE (R), directed by Steve Pink, written by Josh Heald, Sean Anders and John Morris, photographed by Jack N. Green and starring John Cusack, Craig Robinson and Rob Corddry, opens March 26.
