Hot Tub Time Machine

In the tradition of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and Back to the Future comes this story about four guys who are accidentally sent back to 1986 through a hot tub time machine. How cool is that? Way better than the Delorean or the phone booth, is the hot tub+booze+russian banned drink+a squirrel = hot tub time machine.

The movie pokes fun at adults wanting to go back to their silly teenage carefree ways. The protagonists are your typical losers: the alcoholic, the guy who was just dumped, the husband who takes his wife's surname, and a teenager who only speaks to girls online and lives a virtual life of a prisoner.

Trying to bring back meaning to their lives and to encourage their supposed suicidal friend (the alcoholic), they go back to Kodiak resort and try to recapture the magic of their teenage life's best days. Only that the resort is a hairline close to being damned, the town is a wash, and they are too old to party. Throw in the hot tub time machine and the whole scene changes dramatically.

The transport through time is a used up formula of down and out heroes being given a second chance, and in the end triumphs, yet, this movie is surprisingly refreshing. Its rapid pace and successive turn of events keeps the story in line though at not all times plausible. The characters are silly yet believable, they do not go out like The Hangover guys or actually live in the past a la the Old School characters (Ferrel, Wilson). And the film is edited good enough that we do not get tired of the used jokes, the silly references and the over the top acting (the bald guy from What Happens in Vegas).

In a genre filled with a lot of typical movies of feel good nonsensical time traveling dudes, this one triumphs and gives us a few useful chuckles and a nice warm bath.