John Cusack & Rob Corddry

A chlorinated, R-rated "Back to the Future," "Hot Tub Time Machine" accomplishes what "Snakes on a Plane" did not:

It offers a merrily idiotic movie to go with its willfully idiotic title.

You know what else it has, besides a Spandex slipstream of references to "Red Dawn," "21 Jump Street" and rampant, period-observant recreational cocaine use?

It has a sense of pacing.

Director Steve Pink gets away with murder because the script offers some actual (if occasionally actionable) verbal comedy, little of it quotable in a family newspaper or its online edition, to accompany the expected gross-out visuals involving projectile vomit and the like.

When a 1986-era ski bum refers to a snowboard brought from 2010 as "that plank thing," it's funny.

When Crispin Glover shows up as a surly one-armed hotel bellman in the present-day scenes, and we then see him with two arms back in the '80s, we wait to see how the dismembering incident will occur. Why does this running gag work? It shouldn't. But Pink's shrewdly chosen ensemble (with one exception) doesn't linger on any one bit for long.

"Hot Tub Time Machine" knows no finesse but plenty of exuberant low-comic spirit.

Three semi-estranged and variously unhappy friends played by John Cusack, Rob Corddry and Craig Robinson reunite for a skiing-and-drinking weekend at the mountain lodge they frequented back in the day.

Turns out the hot tub's a time machine. That's the premise, and the movie sticks to it.

You know how "Hot Tub Time Machine" was born?

Co-writer Josh Heald was in producer Matt Moore's office one day, and Moore suggested they remake the 1984 skis-and-skin junker "Hot Dog ... the Movie." Heald misheard him; he thought he said "tub," not "dog."

It sags in the middle (don't we all), and Chevy Chase is sort of a drag, overselling undercooked material as the magical George Carlin-y "repair man."

But with Cusack, the drolly deadpan Robinson and the equally dry Clark Duke (who plays the Cusack character's nephew, encountering his future mother back in '86), even the derivative material gets a fair shake. Many will no doubt hate it. It's cruder than " The Hangover." It's also twice as clever. The jaundiced affection for the '80s seems about right. Now: In 40 years or so, what kind of time-traveling comedies will they be making about us?

 

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"Hot Tub Time Machine" Movie Trailer

HOT TUB TIME MACHINE follows a group of best friends whove become bored with their adult lives: Adam (John Cusack) has been dumped by his girlfriend; Lou (Rob Corddry) is a party guy who cant find the party; Nick's (Craig Robinson) wife controls his every move; and video game-obsessed Jacob (Clark Duke) wont leave his basement. After a crazy night of drinking in a ski resort hot tub, the men wake up, heads pounding, in the year 1986. This is their chance to kick some past and change their futures one will find a new love life, one will learn to stand up for himself with the ladies, one will find his mojo, and one will make sure he still exists!

 

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MPAA rating: R (for strong crude and sexual content, nudity, drug use and pervasive language).

Running time: 1:33.

Cast: John Cusack (Adam); Rob Corddry (Lou); Craig Robinson (Nick); Clark Duke (Jacob); Chevy Chase (Repair Man); Crispin Glover (Phil); Lizzy Caplan (April); Collette Wolfe (Kelly).

Credits: Directed by Steve Pink; written by Josh Heald, Sean Anders and John Morris; produced by John Cusack, Grace Loh and Matt Moore. An MGM release.