Hot Tub Time Machine 2 Plot Summary:
With his knowledge of the future, Lou (Rob Corddry) has become the insanely rich President of Lougle, while Nick (Craig Robinson) has fueled his music career on pop songs he already knows. When Lou is shot by an unknown assailant, the Hot Tub team travels ten years into the future to find Lou’s killer.
This is one of the sad cases where all the best jokes are indeed in the trailer, because this movie has nothing else. As someone who loved the first Hot Tub Time Machine, this was a massive disappointment. I was surprised this even got a sequel as the first one wasn’t super successful, but when I heard it was happening and that it would be set in the future, I was all on board. Not so much after seeing the film. While the first one relied on funny dialogue and banter among the characters, this is all shock and dick jokes. Seriously, I think I’ve reached my dick joke quota for the rest of my movie life. Are they serious with this? The movie can’t go five minutes without a damn dick joke! Well, let’s dive into the disappointment that is Hot Tub Time Machine 2.
No John Cusack this time around, but Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, and Clark Duke all return. These are all names in comedy I like a lot, and they actually do a good job in the first fifteen minutes. Corddry acts like an asshole at a Lougle board meeting, Robinson is knocking off funny renditions of pop songs, and Clark Duke is the master of getting abused, but still manages to get in his sarcastic retorts. The set up is even funny. I like the idea of these guys having to track down a future killer, and when they first arrive in the future, it’s classic banter among the three just like in the first one. It doesn’t take long for the film to completely get blown off course though.
The entire middle hour is a giant diversion from the plot, and it’s not better off for it. It’s nothing but a barrage of dick and gay jokes. That’s it. There’s literally nothing else happening. These jokes don’t even push the envelope, it’s just really boring. They introduce Adam Scott and Gillian Jacobs as new characters, two people I like a lot in their respective shows (Parks and Recreation, Community), but they are given nothing to work with, much like everybody else. Chevy Chase returns for one scene as the mystical time guy, but that’s it. It’s almost like they had him for two hours, although his scene is pretty funny, and they even managed to make me laugh with a cliché Caddyshack reference.
Once they finally get back to the plot in the last twenty minutes, the movie picks up a little bit, and the end credit sequence was fairly amusing. Overall though, this was simply a huge waste of time. I didn’t completely hate it because the actors did a decent job of elevating the material, but all of them deserved better. Hot Tub Time Machine 3 isn’t happening.
Rating: 5 out of 10 (Barely Passable Entertainment)
===========================================================================================
Daniel Cohen is the Film Editor for Pop-Break. Aside from reviews, Daniel does a weekly box office predictions column, and also contributes monthly Top Tens and Op-Ed’s on all things film. Daniel is a graduate of Bates College with a degree in English, and also studied Screenwriting at UCLA. He can also be read on www.movieshenanigans.com. His movie crush is Jessica Rabbit. Follow him on Twitter @dcohenwriter.
===========================================================================================
