Hot Tub Time Machine 2
Dustin Chase
To quote myself from my review of Hot Tub Time Machine back in 2010, “This is the dumbest script I have ever read, let’s get it made.” Likely what producers or a studio head told Josh Heald when he presented this idea. That rings just as true for the sequel which has abandoned original star John Cusack (who says he was never approached to star in the sequel). Lucky for Cusack, bad for us, Hot Tub Time Machine 2 is easily the worst mainstream film of 2015 so far. This science fiction / comedy reminds us (again) why those two genre’s should never go together… ever.
Now that all the friends are millionaires living out their dreams, Lou (Corddry) manages to get his penis shot off at a party, forcing the threesome to jump back into the preserved time machine. The magical whirl pool sends them ten years into the future instead of the past. 2025 finds Lou’s son Jacob (Duke) now the mastermind behind the company he created Lougle, while Nick (Robinson) is a washed up singer. Neil Patrick Harris is president of the United States and Lisa Loeb never wrote a hit song thanks to Nick. In between snorting cocaine, strip clubs and booze the threesome must chase down the man responsible for killing Lou in the past.
I’m convinced that if you buy a ticket to this, that you would buy a ticket to anything.
“Somebody’s grumpy cuz they got murdered”. No, someone’s grumpy because a big pile of crap just got projected on the screen and called a movie by a bunch of morons in Hollywood. Original writer Josh Heald even finds a way to get the entire title of the film, including the numeral, in one of the lines. Not only is Hot Tub Time Machine 2 not funny, but it just picks and grabs at whatever relevant movie reference it can find for a joke. There isn’t an intelligent scene in the film as these guys attempt to fill the void left by The Hangover trilogy or feed whatever fans Adam Sandler has left.
The script like every other buddy-comedy, makes the round of boobs, drugs, penis jokes, puking and female degradation. I’m convinced that if you buy a ticket to this, that you would buy a ticket to anything. By the movie’s desperate conclusion there is a half written ideology of family and forgiveness, but after seeing Adam Scott’s character squirt all over Nick and Lou’s face, “there was semen in that”; there was nothing they could show to make me care anything about the characters or their fate.
Final Thought
No one should have to endure the torture of this movie. 2015 now has its lowest bar point.