What I Think About Movies I've Seen

Tonight, I attended a free sneak preview of the upcoming Hot Tub Time Machine. I've been looking forward to this movie ever since I saw the trailer and was happy to get the opportunity to watch it tonight. Unfortunately, the screening itself wasn't an entirely positive experience, as I was constantly distracted by a studio representative continuously pacing the aisles, and the person sitting next to me felt it necessary to get up three times during the movie. Nevertheless, I'll try to constrain my review to the movie itself rather than my experience.

Adam (John Cusack), Nick (Craig Robinson), and Lou (Rob Corddry) are longtime friends that are each going through a midlife crisis. They haven't made the time to see each other recently, but they're reunited when Lou has a short hospital stay, and they all decide to get away to a ski resort that they used to frequent in their younger days. Adam's nephew Jacob (Clark Duke) is staying with Adam and he also comes along for the ride. Adam, Nick, and Lou all have very rose-colored memories of the resort, but when they arrive they see that it's become run down over time and fallen into disrepair. However, their suite does have its own hot tub, and after a night of heavy partying in the hot tub, they awaken to find themselves transported to the year 1986 when Adam, Nick, and Lou were all there before, and they find themselves resigned to repeating their earlier actions in order to avoid creating a rift in the space-time continuum.

As you would expect, this movie is rife with 80s references. It's of course heavily inspired by Back to the Future and evokes it constantly, but there are subtle and not-so-subtle references to several other movies like Red Dawn, Say Anything, Sixteen Candles, and The Karate Kid. There's plenty of 80s music as well, although some of it's more obscure (but maybe that's some High Fidelity influence). And of course the clothes and hairstyles are also from that era, albeit probably overstated for comedic effect.

But the reason I wanted to see this movie was for the comedy, and there I was let down. There are some good lines, but it's disappointing how many of the best ones were in the trailer. If you've seen the trailer (and especially the red-band trailer), then you've pretty much seen the movie. There are a few gems that they held back, but towards the end I found myself keeping a mental checklist of scenes from the trailer that hadn't played yet. I think that if I hadn't seen the trailer, or if they had chosen to edit the trailer differently, then I probably would have enjoyed the movie a lot more.