Filthy Hot Tub a Foul, if Still Funny, Sequel
It’s been five years since friends Lou (Rob Corddry) and Nick (Craig Robinson), along with the former’s buttoned-up son Jacob (Clark Duke), went to Aspen and took a dip in a hot tub time machine in order to help one of their more level-headed mates get over being dumped by his girlfriend. Since then they have used information gleamed from their jaunts forwards and backwards through the decades to make celebrities of themselves, Nick a highly successful musician known for his fusing of pop, R&B and rap while Lou has started the most successful tech company in the world, ‘Louggle,’ amassing a staggering fortune in the process.
During one of Lou’s scandalous star-studded parties, an attempt is made on his life. Bleeding to death, the trio jump back into the hot tub time machine thinking they’ll zap back a couple of hours and stop the assassin before they can pull the trigger. But the tub has other ideas, sending the group ten years into the future putting them face-to-face with the son, Adam, Jr. (Adam Scott), of the man who originally got into the tub with them when they were in Aspen way back when.
PHOTO: Paramount Pictures
There’s no reason for Hot Tub Time Machine 2, the long in coming sequel to the 2010 cult comedy favorite, to exist, a fact that becomes more than obvious once the messy machinations of returning screenwriter Josh Heald’s narrative begin to fall into place. The whole film is nothing more than a flimsy excuse for Corddry, Robinson, Duke and Scott to run amok and little else, each of them gamely trying to outdo the other as they toss filthy double-entendres back and forth engaging in as much lewd and degrading bits of behavior as a 93-minute running time can handle. The plot barely matters, a fact the actors themselves make mention of over and over again, and unlike its predecessor this sequel never cares to balance out the grotesqueries with anything resembling a heart.
And that is the main reason this second effort won’t have the staying power or resonance of the first film. Director Steve Pink, also making his return to the series, does what he can to move things along, find some sort of balance between the flimsy mystery and all of the rapid-fire gags, and while his efforts are monumental they do little to change the fact that, sadly, when looked at in the cold light of day this sequel frankly isn’t very good. It’s so schizophrenic and slapdash it is almost as if the cast and crew made it all up on the spot, and whenever they get into trouble the solution more often than not is to spew out a handful of four-letter words or make a penis joke.
Yet, try as I might, I cannot hate on Hot Tub Time Machine 2. The simple truth is that I laughed, sometimes a lot and usually out loud. There were a number of bits, most of them courtesy of either Duke or Scott (although Robinson has some crackerjack moments, especially as they pertain to his musical career), that had me chuckling so hard I thought I might pull a stomach muscle, and for that reason – and really that reason alone – I can’t say this sequel isn’t entirely without merit.
It is odd that the whole thing revolves around the one character, John Cusack’s Adam, who decided not to return for a second dip in the tub, and the reliance on homophobic humor, especially an extended sequence involving anal rape of all things, is distasteful. On that latter point, the film itself even makes note of just how horrible the sequence is, calling itself out for stooping to the level it does in order to get a handful of uneasy laughs. Finally, Corddry, who I typically only care for in relatively small doses, is a poisonous presence, the fact his character is so front and center an almost fatal flaw the film never quite overcomes.
Which, again, makes it kind of bizarre I can’t rise to anything close to resembling hate for this sequel. To paraphrase a very old adage, laughter cures just about anything, and while it can’t make Hot Tub Time Machine 2 a good movie it does manage to transform it into a far more enjoyable one than it otherwise would have been.
Film Rating: 2½ (out of 4)
