For fans
of John Cusack, the last few years have been a fairly bewildering time as the
actor whose mere presence in a film was an almost certain indication that it
would be of greater intelligence, ambition and quality than most (“The
Sure Thing,” “Tapeheads,” “Say Anything,” “Grosse
Pointe Blank” and “High Fidelity” to name but a few) has lately
been found in a string of projects so questionable that even Nicolas Cage might
have hesitated to appear in them if they had come his way. However, if the first couple of months of 2015 are any
indication, those fans can be reassured that he seems to be finally turning
things around at last. For one thing, his presence in David Cronenberg’s
startling “Maps to the Stars” indicates that he is still willing and
able to tackle challenging material when it comes his way. For another, his
complete absence from “Hot Tub Time Machine 2,” the dreadful sequel
to the 2010 comedy that proved to be a minor hit in theaters and a huge success
on DVD and cable, indicates that there are indeed some things that even he
won’t do for money these days.
For those
of you who somehow missed the original “Hot Tub Time Machine,” it
told the story of three longtime friends—Adam (Cusack), Lou (Rob Corddry) and
Nick (Craig Robinson)—who, along with the younger Jacob (Clark Duke), who was
Adam’s nephew and turned out to be Lou’s son, visited a dilapidated ski resort
from their misspent youths and, through the aid of the titular device, were
transported back to 1986 and were able to re-experience a particularly
memorable weekend that had a great effect on their lives. The film was dumb,
raunchy and pretty forgettable beyond its admittedly catchy title (I am
struggling to recall the details and I just rewatched it yesterday in
preparation for viewing the sequel) but it had a couple of funny moments here
and there that took full advantage of the total absurdity of the concept and
historians will note that it found room in the cast for Lizzy Caplan and
Jessica Pare in the days before their respective breakthroughs on “Masters
of Sex” and “Mad Men.” That said, there was absolutely nothing
about it that screamed “sequel” and if “Hot Tub Time Machine
2” accomplishes anything—and it really doesn’t—it is that it too never
manages to find a way to justify its own existence.
This time
around, it turns out that both Lou and Nick have taken advantage of the time
machine to manipulate events to their advantage—the loathsome idiot Lou is the
often-shirtless and enormously rich founder of the technological marvel that is
Lougle, while failed musician Nick is having hit after hit with songs that he
has been cribbing from people who aren’t even aware that they are being ripped
off—while Jacob is reduced to serving as Lou’s long-suffering butler. (Adam’s
absence is explained away in the vaguest manner imaginable.) At one of Lou’s
lavish parties, one of the many people with a grudge against him shoots him (in
the crotch, ha ha ha) and before he can bleed out, Nick and Jacob drag him to the
magical hot tub (don’t ask) with the plan of going back in time in order to
save Lou’s life and find out who shot him.
Alas,
things go screwy and the three wind up going 10 years into the future into what
may be an alternate universe in which the past is the future and vice versa, and
in which Lou has not yet been shot. While trying to find Adam, who they suspect
of having pulled the trigger, the three come across Adam’s son, Adam Jr. (Adam
Scott), a straight arrow about to marry his equally prim sweetheart (Gillian
Jacobs), and he joins up with them on the search. Along the way, the guys
become embroiled in a game show in which washed-up celebrities are forced to do
whatever the studio audience votes on, find themselves pursued by a
self-driving smart car that also develops an urge to kill Lou, overindulge in
any number of chemical substances with often-icky results and have
heart-to-heart talks that are more difficult to take than usual since most of
them involve the increasingly odious Corddry.
The original
“Hot Tub Time Machine” was a dumb movie, of course, but it at least
tried to approach its dumbness in a smart way. Here, despite the return of
director Steve Pink and screenwriter Josh Heald (who co-wrote the original and
who goes solo here), this installment is a dumb movie that seems hell-bent on
becoming dumber and cruder with each successive scene. The dialogue is vulgar
as all get out without every being particularly funny for the most part (there
are a couple of amusing bits where the guys riff on what the others look like
but this bit gets old really fast), the gross-out stuff is really gross (if you
can name a bodily fluid, it is expelled in abundance here) and whatever wit and
cleverness there was on display the first time around has been replaced with
such witty moments as a depiction of the lighter side of virtual reality
near-rape.
Unless
the idea of a half-naked Rob Coddry acting like the worst human being
imaginable (a far cry from the occasionally sympathetic version of the
character seen the first time around) for 90 minutes strikes you as comedic
gold, “Hot Tub Time Machine 2” is pretty much a total waste of
time and energy. It looks cheap, the story is little more
than a string of haphazardly constructed scenes with little to offer either
narratively or comedically, the characters are far more irritating than
endearing this time around and without Cusack’s laid-back presence to ground
things, his co-stars spend most of their screen time riffing and scatting with
great bluster and little effect. And even though the whole enterprise looks and
feels like a direct-to-video enterprise, it ends on a note that suggests the
possibility of a “Hot Tub Time Machine 3″—while I suspect that such
a thing will never actually see the light of day, may I suggest that if it
does, it should involve the characters going back in time (or forward or
whatever) in order to ensure that “Hot Tub Time Machine 2” never exists.
Source:: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/hot-tub-time-machine-2-2015
