“Hot Tub Time Machine 2” – Paramount(NEW YORK) — In a parallel universe, Hot Tub Time Machine would be a terrific five-minute red band trailer. In this universe, it’s an underwhelming, uninspired, lazy, R-rated comedy with just enough funny moments to fill a five-minute red band trailer…and that doesn’t bode well for a movie that has 88 additional minutes to fill.
Even in the best time travel flicks, fans are usually able to poke holes in the continuity issues, but when it comes to this movie, you may want to back off. After all, this is a movie about a hot tub time machine. If you’re willing to pay money and suspend your disbelief enough to see a film based on that particular concept, then you might as well just go all in and accept every ill-conceived plotline presented here.
The film begins with a news report on the lives of Lou (Rob Corddry), Nick (Craig Washington) and Jacob (Clark Duke), chronicling their incredible rise to fame and fortune after the life-changing ski trip depicted in the original Hot Tub Time Machine. We learn that Lou became a rock star and also created the Internet tech company Lougle (get it?). Nick became an international singing sensation and multiple Grammy-winning recording artist by using time travel to steal and pre-release pop hits from the 90s. Jacob, meanwhile, hasn’t done anything except live with his father, Lou, whom he hates. As for John Cusack’s character Adam, well, Cusack didn’t agree to appear in the sequel, so he’s been replaced by Adam Scott, who plays Cusack’s character’s son. How is that possible? Because time travel, obviously.
After Lou is shot in the crotch, Nick and Jacob attempt to save his by taking another dip in the hot tub: they want to go back in time to stop the guy who shot him. But when the three of them get out of the tub, they wind up, not in the past, but 10 years in the future. Not only that, but Lou’s crotch is completely healed. That’s when Chevy Chase’s time-traveling hot tub handyman appears and explains that the tub doesn’t take you where you want to go: it takes you where you need to go.
As it so happens, these guys aren’t exactly in the future; they’re in a parallel future. They then deduce that this parallel future is actually the past of the present time they came from! Let’s pause for a few seconds while your brain stops hurting.
Ok, let’s continue…
In this particular future, dogs ride hover boards, and self-driving smart cars show up when you need a ride, when they’re not trying to kill you. This destination on the non-linear concept we call time also includes Adam Junior (Scott) as a nauseatingly nice and innocent guy who is about to marry his sweetheart of ten years (Gillian Jacobs). Adam acts as our heroes’ guide around 2025, where they wreak havoc upon themselves and cause all sorts of trouble for each other.
Hot Tub Time Machine 2 comes across as a desperate attempt to cash in on the surprise success of the first movie, but then again, most sequels come across this way. It’s just that here, you can picture writer Josh Heald, who did a terrific job with the first movie, standing in front of his dry erase board, desperately trying to figure out how to shove what would normally be a powerful life lesson into a movie filled with crotch jokes. Some of them work, by the way – but not enough do.
Two out of five stars.
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