Movie Review: Hot Tub Time Machine

I see that Hot Tub Time Machine was used as frequently as a real hot tub with a band-aid floating in it. That's kind of too bad. I mean, it's not HILARIOUS, but it's funny with a lowercase f. I mean, America hoisted Alice in Wonderland up on its shoulders as though it were some kind of cinematic milestone, you think they'd at least have no problem checking out something passably funny. Oh well, here's my review:

Chunks Blown, Blow Snorted
Hot Tub Time Machine is raunch for raunch’s sake

Compared with director Steve Pink’s Hot Tub Time Machine, Joe Biden’s recent F-bomb was deployed with the grace of Mikhail Baryshnikov dancing on the head of a pin. Its grammatical diversity on full display, the F-word is no mere extravagance. Remove it, and characters are reduced to articles and conjunctions; they’d be left asking, “the and?” Josh Heald, Sean Anders and John Morris birthed a simplistic, goofy script and slapped it with raunchy until it sounded like a sailor and smelled like a crack house bathroom. Why? Because filth is the new king of comedy; sorry, Jerry Lewis.

Although the title is nearly a complete synopsis, here goes: estranged friends Adam (John Cusack) and Nick (Craig Robinson) are compelled to care for their former friend and current douche Lou (Rob Corddry) after he passively attempts suicide while listening to Mötley Crüe…which is understandable. Their solution is to take everyone, including Adam’s nephew Jacob (Clark Duke), and head to the ski lodge they loved in their teenage years. Then they climb into a hot tub time machine. The end.

Fine. Slightly more happens, although it is slight. Once in the 80s, the group bickers about the butterfly effect—the movie and the phenomenon—and do a Lohan-esque amount of drinking and drug consumption. Adam meets a potential love (Lizzy Caplan), Nick gets to sing again and Lou alternates between showing his ass and getting it kicked. It’s all inconsequential…other than waiting to see how Phil (Crispin Glover), who is a one-armed bellhop in the present day, loses his appendage.

Any movie that employs used-up Chevy Chase as the deus ex machina isn’t overly concerned about plot. What matters is laughs, and there is a sufficient amount…not an exceeding amount, but a sufficient amount. Cusack’s humor comes from our nostalgia for his 80s career, Robinson’s comes from his brilliant dead pan and Corddry’s comes from his reckless abandon. He brings bravado to every scene, from puking on a squirrel to fathering a child. What Zach Galifianakis was to The Hangover, Corddry is here.

Hot Tub Time Machine’s biggest sin isn’t its incessant sinning, it’s the jokes left on the sticky floor. The 80s get off light, as do most time-travel pop culture references. If it had kept the frat-house feel without feeling like it was written after a bender in a frat house, it could have been more than just dirty fun.

Grade = B-

Movie Review: 2012

It was not a banner week for movie critics here at the ole Reader. Whilst I was being hoisted by my own petard through Pirate Radio, Ben was bending over for 2012...which I'm totally going to see anyway. I know it's maniacally stupid, but last night I paused AGAIN during The Day After Tomorrow on FX (this time to see how the fire that my wife and I had going in our fireplace stacked up against the fire that kept a room full of people alive in a giant library when temperatures dropped to negative blurgillion degrees). So, I'm fully prepared for the junk kick that will come, but 2012 and I have a date with misery. Here's Ben's take.

Oh Maya God!
2012 details the end of the Mayan calendar...and the world
Ben Coffman

Roland Emmerich (10,000 BC; The Day After Tomorrow), the director of 2012, is to natural disasters what Michael Bay is to explosions or Megan Fox—fond of them to the point of fetishism. While some directors cast young starlets because they find them attractive, the adored actor in 2012 is Emmerich’s earthquake cracks, which are both sneaky like Gremlins and destructive like Godzilla.

Before stuff starts disintegrating, however, 2012 audaciously takes half an hour to introduce us to its characters. First, we meet Adrian Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a geologist who has discovered that solar flares (or solar climaxes as one character, without giggling, calls them) have caused the Earth’s core to melt like a suppository, giving the Earth a bad case of fiery diarrhea.

Next we meet Jackson Curtis (John Cusack), a failed writer and father so irresponsible that he overslept instead of picking up his kids for summer vacation. After driving to Yellowstone, Curtis and company meet Charlie Frost (Woody Harrelson), a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist who distrusts the government as much as he loves pickles (this detail is an example of what passes for characterization in 2012). Harrelson, with all of his freaky overacting, seems to be the only one who realizes that his director cares more about CGI cracks than actors. Likewise, his character is the only one who realizes (other than the aforementioned Helmsley) that something bad is happening with the Earth.

After Curtis and his kids return to Los Angeles, the world falls apart, resulting in a “let’s escape the earthquake” chase scene in a limousine. As they wend their way through the crumbling streets of Los Angeles, which is being shuffled like a deck of cards, their limo is showered with raw sewage, providing one of the movie’s grossest images—and strongest metaphors.

The latter half of the movie, a fight for survival against an increasingly awful world, is like the latter half of a demolition derby: everything is damaged, smoking and slow. A few scenes at the end of the movie feature crying and strings, but ultimately, and I mean this in the nicest possible way—nobody cares. Watching millions of people die in fiery natural disasters is a bit numbing.

2012 does some things right: it is full of sweeping, grandiose overhead shots and great disaster CGI. It is The Poseidon Adventure on a worldwide scale, with better effects. It is a summer blockbuster in November, the 96-ounce truck-stop steak of movies. However, it’s over two and a half hours and requires a rare type of visual gluttony.

Ultimately, 2012 is meant to be a romp. It is, without exception, wholly devoid of pathos, or even good characters. With the amount of attention, time and money ($200 million) thrown at a film like this, our society probably could've cured some moderately malignant disease like the swine flu. Or bought winter coats for homeless people. Or paid down the national deficit for future generations. Instead we have the opportunity to face our end-of-days fears together. And watch every building in the entire world collapse.

Grade: D+

Ryan's Junk Drawer

I like this image because it's kind of creepy. This guy apparently keeps a mouse tail, a tube of what appears to be "love rocket lightning," a screw, Canadian money, and a snakeskin in his junk drawer. Creepier still, I got this from "Highlights" magazine. There was a poem that went with it, but any poem that doesn't have a line ending with "izzle" is dead to me (unless it's written in haiku form, which we all know to be the superior poetic formula). I'm going to use this image to introduce my junk (the top 5 non-big stories of the week) until I'm legally forced to stop.

Here's the top 5 non-big stories (aka, MY JUNK!)

1.) Red just got red hot - Why do I follow phenomenal comic writer @warrenellis on twitter? I don't know, because he delivers tweets like this: "I have 149,935 followers. The 150,000th must kill someone of my choosing or I will murder their family." That's good stuff. Ellis writes a shitpile of comics, some very good, some just weird. "Red" is one I haven't...ahem...READ yet, but I fully intend to. Back in April, Morgan Freeman and Bruce Willis were joined in this tale of a CIA operative who is "too old for this shit," quits, and of course "knows too much" and thus gets people trying to kill him. Willis is the old CIA man, Freeman is presumably the bad guy, Helen Mirren has just joined (fingers crossed as the sexy-time love interest...I kid...unless you're into that), and the real exciting news just dropped this week. Apparently, John C. Reilly has joined up...and Willis got his real love interest (no, not Reilly...unless you're into that): this gal.

There were any number of photos of the lovely miss Mary Louise Parker that I could have chosen from in various states of undress, but I think this best proves why she must have made a deal with the devil to be so thoroughly beguiling at 45. LOOK AT THAT WOMAN. The beauty is she's somewhat age-appropriate for Willis's character BUT she still looks like a young hottie, so it satisfies Hollywood's hatred for aged women (other than Helen Mirren, Judy Dench, and Meryl Streep). Spy movie? Written by a comic nerd? With John C. Reilly? AND Mary Louise Parker? Red just shot to the top of my hominhominahomina-gots-to-see-this-NOW list.

2.) So, you're saying you think a Depp/Jolie movie will make money? - I have always admired Johnny Depp for not taking the easy way out. After his "21 Jump Street" introduction, he quickly went batshit insane, taking on roles in a John Waters movie and becoming Tim Burton's muse. Until Pirates, he was a leading man without a signature role or huge franchise hit. I didn't mind that Pirates became all PIRATES but now it looks like he's gotten a taste of the big-time bug and doesn't want to let go. According to Variety, Depp will be taking over for Sam "How the f**k did I get famous" Worthington in The Tourist, a movie about an average tourist who gets convinced to help the government track down an ex who is a major criminal...the criminal in this case being Jolie. It kind of sounds like every other Angelina Jolie movie, and Depp will probably want to play the tourist with a prosthetic leg and a lisp, but to be honest it sounds so commercial I'm shocked Depp is involved. I really hope we aren't losing one of the good ones to the path of least resistance. Also, to show I'm an equal time fella, here's a picture of Johnny Depp (albeit one in which he looks like the guy working at Starbucks who will give you your goddamn latte but resent you whilst doing it).

3.) Direct-to-TV sequel? - I kind of want to see 2012. I know it's going to be total crap story-wise, but you're talking to one half of a husband and wife team who have viewed The Day After Tomorrow about 3 times on FX after seeing it in the theater and not liking it. I haven't truly enjoyed the movie during any of my 4-5 times watching it...so that must say something about crapmaster Roland Emmerich's ability to make watchable bullshit (and about my wife's and my obsession about apocalyptic disasters). Entertainment Weekly is reporting that Emmerich is pimping "2013," a TV series that would be set after the events of 2012. I know, you were hoping for a series that explored what happened if you added 113 to 1900, but you'll have to wait. Sure, this kind of reveals that the Earth doesn't implode in 2012, but so long as it doesn't end with John Cusack facing down some of the worst computer-generated wolves of all time like Day After Tomorrow, I'm okay knowing that humanity survives. Again, I'm torn. I know that Emmerich makes crap, but I watched every episode of the poorly acted "Jericho" because I was so obsessed with post-apocalyptic scenarios. Damn you, Emmerich for putting me in this position. And now, to make myself feel better (and because I mentioned John Cusack above), here's a squirrel holding an invisible boombox above his head.

4.) Angelina Jolie tastes like familiar Salt - I like that we have a female action star, I just kind of wish it wasn't Angelina Jolie. First off, I don't buy that she's able to fling her 87-pound body around with any force. "Oh no, she hit me with all the inertia of a wet noodle." I mean, when Jennifer Garner was throwin' 'bows in "Alias," I bought it. Jolie, not so much. Plus, all of her stuff is starting to look the same. Watch the trailer for Salt, which was rewritten by Kurt Wimmer (the guy who rocked Equilibrium and then farted out Ultraviolet), and tell me it doesn't look exactly like Wanted and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Jolie's a good actress...so maybe more of the acting should happen now.



5.) Dick Cheney's dream of a white Middle East is realized! - I don't know why no one is able to find a single Middle Eastern actor or actress to appear in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. I also don't know why the first movie in a potential series can't just be titled Prince of Persia. Why we're at it, I don't know why Jake Gyllenhaal has a British accent for his role as a Persian prince...or why Gemma Arterton (who is totally hotsies, don't get me wrong) is the female lead when there are plenty of beautiful Middle Eastern ladies available...or why Ben Kingsley is the bad Persian guy...or why this trailer confuses me so much when I played the entire game it's based on...or why they decided to give Arterton, who nobody knows, the entire voiceover for the trailer...and why SHE speaks in a British accent. So, this appears to be a movie in which white people pretend to be Persian and a lot of computer effects happen. I want this to be fun but boy does it look like a hot white-Persian mess right now.