Time Warped

The obligatory follow-up to 2010’s cult-comedy hit ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ is as bad as its Rotten Tomatoes composite rating (currently sitting at 13%) would suggest.  While the original was a somewhat enjoyable romp back to the '80's starring John Cusack, Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, Clark Duke and Chevy Chase, HTTM2 proved to be a limp, uninspired, unfunny, obnoxious and utterly unnecessary sequel that no time machine (hot tub or otherwise) can undo.  So why did I watch it?  Out of a misguided sense of obligation to this blog and in the vain hopes that I might disagree with the critics?  Perhaps.  But look on bright side, now you won't have to.
 

Picking up sometime after the first movie left off, our erstwhile time-travelers were forced to take another dip in the hot tub when ‘80’s glam rocker Lou (Corddry) was shot in the crotch at a party and ‘died,’ prompting his mates to drag him back in the tub and dial back the clock so they can prevent his assassination.  Except they went ‘back to the future’ to 2025 and met Adam (Adam Scott from ‘Parks and Recreation’), who is the son of John Cusack’s Adam in the first movie.  What follows is a series of lackluster and humorless gags, including a grimace-inducing scene in which Lou and Nick (Craig Robinson) had to engage in virtual gay sex on a reality TV show, that only managed to get grosser and more offensive while doing little in the way of moving the plot along, not to say that this movie had much of one in the first place.
 

It’s not that HTTM2 is lewd, crude and rude.  Those of you who read my reviews of comedies such as 'Ted' and 'Neighbors' know that I have no problems with R-rated raunch-coms that violate human decency and good taste.  Had HTTM2 only been funny I would have been much more forgiving, but I can’t think of one moment in the entire movie when I laughed out loud.  Instead, I found the movie and its characters annoying, pathetic, offensive and devoid of humor.  To sum it up, HTTM2 turned out to be a bore, as much as I wanted to like it because I rather enjoyed the original.
 

Grade: D