Hot Tub Time Machine 2

When I first saw Hot Tub Time Machine back in 2010, I was pleasantly surprised. It was an entertaining buddy movie that yearned for something more, that came packaged with a soul and an ethos, and with its powerful heart, it took great strides to comfort us and lead us on a journey toward self-discovery and catharsis. Hot Tub Time Machine was as much an exercise in great dark comedy as it was a purge of all that was wrong in our lives, and it came loaded with characters that were funny yet so very human. It had all the markings of a truly great movie, and one could tell it was a labor of love, carefully crafted by an adept team.

Hot Tub Time Machine 2, on the other hand, casts itself far astray from its predecessor. In this sequel, we find our regular cast of characters (Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, and Clark Duke – John Cusack is absent this time around) living the good future they've carved out for themselves in their last outing. But they're unhappy. Ego and wealth has seized hold of them, and in Corddry's case, has turned him into a frustratingly awful monster that no one, not even his wife or son, can stand. It's during the middle of a party where Fate propels them on another adventure, as a cloaked assassin shoots Corddry in the family jewels. The team rallies together and plunges through the pool of time to find this assassin and halt a "friend's" murder.

Along the way, our protagonists meet up with Adam Scott, cast as a replacement to and a bastard child of John Cusack's character. And it's through Scott that Robinson, Duke, and Corddry discover they weren't just propelled into the future, they were cast onto an alternate time line, a recurring joke intended to spoof several popular movie franchises as of late, most notably The Terminator franchise. After a convoluted exposition and an overdone foundation for time travel, hilarity ensues.

So the audience waits. And waits. And waits. The sounds of candy wrappers and teeth mashing popcorn echo off the walls of the theater. A few people cough. Someone blows snot into tissue paper. A cell phone warbles the classic Power Rangers theme through a pair of jeans. But no one laughs. The audience is so stoic, I find myself wondering if I accidentally stumbled into a screening of American Sniper. Nope. Rob Corddry is on screen vomiting penis jokes at a mile a minute. And no one is laughing.

It's like this for most of the movie. Every twenty minutes I might hear a slight chuckle, but this theater is mostly a mausoleum. Saint Peter is before us, showing us the last endeavors of director Steve Pink and writer Josh Heald before their careers died. It's a lesson for us, a morality play on cashing in with an undeserving sequel.

"Hot Tub Time Machine 2 is lazy," Saint Peter tells us. "It's a bucket of unused jokes thrown at the screen in disarray, hoping — nay, praying — something sticks. It's a good thing John Cusack knew well enough to stay away, but the devils who made this had to go ahead and drag Adam Scott into this disaster." There's a scene midway through Hot Tub Time Machine 2 where Scott trips on psychotropic drugs. He puts this thing called an "electric ladybug" on his neck, which is little more than a bug-shaped microchip. Scott trips for hours and hours, and it's an excuse for the creative time to play with different lenses and editing tools. As I'm watching Scott make a goof of himself for the camera, his head twisting and turning into odd shapes while he makes faces, I couldn't help but feel sorry for him. Here he is, having the time of his life, and we're staring at him like a bunch of old people on a bench with nothing better to do — arms folded and hell bent on people-watching.

What's even sadder is Scott's whole motivation, as a character, is to find his dad. The movie teases us with John Cusack references frequently, whether it's the group of friends finding Cusack's trench coat or his boxed memories of "Cincinnati" (a point of furious indignation in the first film) or Scott, holding up Cusack's photo, bemoaning the ills of being a fatherless son. And whether or not this teasing was meant to be a joke, there's no delivery, and there's no punch line. Hot Tub Time Machine 2 dangles the carrot of a missing character, arguably the one who brings the cathartic element to the previous film, above our heads for an hour and a half and offers nothing for solace. Much like the rest of the movie, there's no sense of closure, no real turning points or soulful characters on a quest to better themselves.

Hot Tub Time Machine 2 isn't another darkly comedic exploration of the human condition. It's just junk food, and even as junk food, it doesn't taste very good. The jokes are half-assed and the script is unpolished. It's a last minute effort to capitalize on a movie that built quite a sizable fan base.

"Hot Tub Time Machine 2," the sequel to the critical and box office hit from 2010, proves definitively that if at first you DO succeed, don't try again.

As Part 2 opens, we find that two of the original time-trippers (Craig Robinson, Rob Corddry) have parlayed their earlier visit back to 1986 into fame and fortune in 2015 (a third, Clark Duke, is pretty much the "butler" to his successful dad). John Cusack, the fourth member of the group, has wisely chosen to take a pass on this misbegotten reunion. He clearly used the hot tub to attain the foreknowledge that this particular venture had disaster written all over it.

Now the remaining trio has to travel ten years into the future to prevent Corddry's assassination in the present (don't ask). Adam Scott ("Parks and Recreation") and Gillian Jacobs ("Community") join in the festivities, though we suspect they'll not want to emphasize this particular part of their resume in any future auditions.

The screenplay by Josh Heald is, to put it mildly, a bit of an incoherent mess, short on logic and humor and long on jokes involving punctured testicles, spurting semen and homosexual rape. There is one funny scene in which the three look into a mirror to see their true selves in 2025, but the writer seems to have saved most of his best material for a clever and amusing end-title sequence. Whether it's worth the ninety minutes of dreck you have to sit through to get there is something you'll have to determine for yourself.

I think this movie was good, not as good as the first one but still not terrible or bad. Its still an enjoyable movie with lots of laughs and fun, silliness and some heart warming moments. I think it would have down better if it had released at a different time and they spent more on advertising, cuz I don't remember having heard about this one. I recommend if you'r looking for an enjoyable movie, especially after watching the first one.

There are very few comedies which have made laugh out loud in a theatre. Hot Tub Time Machine 2 is one of those comedies. I could very well be incorrect, but I should imagine that many of the people who did not enjoy this film were offended by depictions of nudity, drug use, binge drinking, sexual intercourse, and jokes or humour dealing with any or all of the foregoing. If you are not a prude, though, then you may find this outrageous comedy is worth a viewing. It is easy, mindless viewing suitable for a night when you could do with a few laughs. As I have not seen the first movie, I have no idea whether it is in any way funny or amusing. It does not strike me as being necessary in the least, though. The Hot Tub Time Machine series would not appear to build upon previous movies in such a way that you need to view the first film to appreciate what goes on in the second. Recommended viewing for those who are not holy rollers.

Who really went into this expecting a masterpiece? Was the first one any better? Nah, not really. Sequels always face harsh criticism, but as far as ridiculous movies with sequels go, this one really isn't that bad. Lighten up, it's a comedy.

I got a lot of laughs from this movie. I got a lot of laughs out of all the "future" advancements we've made as a society. From "smart cars" that get the O.K. to execute people, the scary (but kinda fun looking) club scene, to the hilarious TV shows we all (probably legitimately) have to look forward to. The end credits are also worth sticking around for, these fools changing American history in photographs is just fun.

Most of the criticisms I've read here are about bad plot, stupid storyline, etc... Quit trying to be some newspaper critic. You're not going to get recruited to a "My BFE Town Today" column off Amazon. It's a silly movie, if you expected more, you should stick to the films that are worthy of judging and criticism.

If you want some laughs, with actors you don't expect anything else from, give this movie an hour and a half of your time.