Thursday, February 19, 2015

HOT TUB TIME MACHINE 2

Rob Corddry   Craig Robinson   Adam Scott   Clark Duke   Jason Jones



Hot Tub Time Machine 2 is so bad, I didn’t mind a cell phone being on a few rows down.  Maybe it’s just not my kind of humor (people in seats behind me were laughing), but I hardly cracked a smile, and just wanted it to be over.  The repertoire is:  penis jokes over and over and over again; people who are shot with blood splattering everywhere, but they don’t really die; drug “jokes”; terrible father—I could go on.  There is even a joke about suicide, in which Lou (Corddry) tells his son Jacob (Duke) that the men from way back in the family have tried to commit suicide.  Of course, everyone is miraculously saved, only to die of something else.
            Having been credited since the first Hot Tub film as the one who invented a time travel solution, Lou, the guru of a tech company is obnoxiously self-serving; he’s so obnoxious his jokes fall to the floor.  And he’s a huge denier of reality; just after his financial person tells him the company is heading for bankruptcy, he makes a speech to all employees at an important function that everything is going great, and that is the reason they should look after themselves and take care of number one.  Whereupon, he gets shot in the balls.  Never fear, though, more than one magical turn of events will see to it that he stays intact.  Whether it’s backward or forward in time, the dialog is insipid and the jokes are lame and repetitious.
            Such a story does not have to make sense, but the dialog and the jokes should still “sing”; neither of which happens in this film.  I have to wonder, why did they make this movie?  The first film in 2010 received poor ratings.  It seems like whatever these filmmakers (Steve Pink, director; Josh Heald, writer) could think of that would be socially repellant, they thought would also be comedy.  Illogical, I would say.

My first ‘F’ of the year.

Grade:  F                        By Donna R. Copeland


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