REVIEW: Hot Tub Time Machine (15)

It's official: John Cusack is the new King of Dumb. Last year he spent 2 1/2 hours running away from the apocalypse in Roland Emmerich's frankly amazing odyssey of chaos and destruction 2012. This time around he's travelling back to the 80s and rewriting (recent) history in the completely literal and nuance-free frat-buddy comedy Hot Tub Time Machine. And to think only 8 years ago he was making films about Hitler.

Frankly, it's a step in the right direction. After spending the last decade churning out such ill-advised box-office shockers as War Inc, The Ice Harvest & (the horror!) Must Love Dogs, Cusack needed a couple of hits, and while Hot Tub is no stone-cold classic along the lines of Grosse Point Blank, it throws up enough giggles with just the right amount of heart to remind us why we all fell in love with him in the first place.

The premise is simple and, to be perfectly honest, about as subtle as a jalapeno enema. A group of friends, all disaffected in some way with their respective love lives and careers, take a weekend break in a dilapidated ski-resort in an effort to cheer up their suicidal best friend Lou (Daily Show veteran Rob Corddry) and recapture the glory days of their youth. Over the course of one wild night, they check in, get drunk and find themselves transported back to 1986, where they're presented with one last chance to change their destinies forever.

So yes, it's not exactly The White Ribbon. In fact, it's barely Weekend At Bernies. Director Steve Pink (best known for writing the aforementioned Grosse Point Blank as well as High Fidelity, another Cusack high watermark) seems less interested in realistic character development than he is in jokes about straight male friends pretending to give each other blow-jobs. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Straight male friends pretending to give each other blow-jobs is, after all, hilarious. The humour is clearly gross, the plot ridiculous and a running joke about a one-armed bell-hop played by mad old Crispin Glover (presumably cast for his Back To The Future credentials) completely and utterly amazing. There's also a cornucopia of downright filthy one-liners that position Hot Tub Time Machine as some kind of Superbad for grown-ups (“Here's a question: was it morally wrong for me to exploit my knowledge of the future for personal financial gain? Perhaps. Here's another question: do I give a fuck?”) And pretty much everything uttered by Rob Corddry is genius (“Shia LaBeouf!”)...he's the Zach Galifianakis of this movie.

Perhaps the only thing that doesn't quite work is a wasted cameo by Chevy Chase who fumbles his way through a handle of throwaway lines and just comes across as shadow of his former bad-ass self. Fletch, Caddyshack, National Lampoon's Vacation...it all feels like a very, very long time ago. Still, he's the not the star of the movie. That honour belongs to Cusack, who heroically presides over Hot Tub Time Machine with a straight face and charisma in spades. It may not be high art, but it's good to have him back.