"Hot Tub Time Machine" is a silly romp with enough sweet touches and heartfelt moments to balance the utter vulgarity and depravity in the movie. Starring John Cusack, Rob Corddry, and Craig Robinson as three childhood best friends who have grown apart over the years, the guys decide to recharge with a fun-filled weekend at their old haunt. Each of the men are dealing with their own mid-life crises, and end up going on a bender to try to recreate the heyday of their youth. As they reminisce over their carefree party days - in the titular hot tub, no less - things get a little too crazy and the guys wake up back in 1986. We continue to see the characters as they look in the present, while the rest of the folks back in 1986 see them as the teens that they were back then. At first, the friends are worried about the so-called butterfly effect and are determined to do everything exactly the same way they did it the first time so as not to dangerously alter anything in the future. However, they soon start to wonder if maybe all this happened for a reason and what they've really been given is a do-over of sorts. Of course, the entire plot is just a device to set up these funny characters in hilarious, gross-out situations, and the film delivers the goods with several laugh-out-loud scenes (though maybe relies just a little too heavily on naked man butt for its humor). The standout here is Corddry, who is fantastic at playing the immature, perverted sidekick to Cusack's more sensitive guy. The three main actors have a great chemistry, and in between all the gags you feel a real connection between them as they ponder where their lives went wrong. The ending is pretty over-the-top sentimental, but the film doesn't try to be anything it's not. "Hot Tub Time Machine" is just a fun-filled, nostalgic trip through time for the 12-year old boy in all of us.
3 out of 5 stars
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