Hot Tub Time Machine Reviews
Well played, Hot Tub Time Machine, well played. You defied expectations, in a good way, and managed to evolve from "potentially silly concept" to "fairly funny film."
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| Original Score: B
Admirably turns a potentially one-note joke into a consistently funny package.
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| Original Score: 7/10
No masterpiece, perhaps, but Hot Tub Time Machine is post-pub perfection.
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| Original Score: 3/5
Hugely raunchy and undeniably funny, with Cusack adding just a hint of sweetness.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Director Steve Pink offsets the satire with moments of genuine warmth.
Hot Tub Time Machine is funnier than any movie called Hot Tub Time Machine has a right to be. And how funny is that? Not very, but a little.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Don't try to teach me about life in a movie called Hot Tub Time Machine. Stick to the sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. It's your destiny.
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| Original Score: 3/5
It's fun, it's sad, and it's kind of sad that it's so much fun.
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| Original Score: 2.5/5
Best title since "Snakes on a Plane" and consistent laughs throughout.
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| Original Score: 4.5/5
Hot Tub Time Machine simmers right along like so many Jacuzzi bubbles popping with a carefully calibrated mix of sight gags, sex jokes and baby boomer references.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Cusack, who self-deprecatingly mocks his iconic presence in '80s films like Say Anything, is terrific -- with an especially wonderful, demented monologue in which he explains why he and his sister are so screwed up.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Like the wonky Jacuzzi that gives the film its title and nutso travel mode, Hot Tub Time Machine operates in fits and starts.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
How bad must a movie be to be good fun? How dumb to be smart? Whatever the case, Hot Tub Time Machine doesn't make the cut.
Newark Star-Ledger
Top CriticIt is this year's funniest film so far. And it's probably even funnier after a couple of Bartles & Jaymes.
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| Original Score: 3/4
For hilarity, characterization and clever structure, The Hangover is far superior. Still, there are some laughs in this uneven but good-natured raunchfest.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Hot Tub Time Machine should have been better than this.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
I am genuinely saddened not to have enjoyed Hot Tub Time Machine.
Hot Tub Time Machine is a surprisingly enjoyable way to waste 90 minutes if you're into dude humor and penis jokes.
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| Original Score: 3/4
A sort of over-heated alternative universe where a funny-again Chevy Chase shows up as the hot tub repair man, the band Poison is all the rage and the '80s kitsch is outstanding.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
It's a reminder of how good it is to be able to laugh at the passage of time, because otherwise, you're crying.
A reverent, foulmouthed, shoddily shot ode to the bottom-feeding cinema of the Reagan era.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Hot Tub is the gross-out-comedy equivalent of spaghetti-testing. Many jokes are hurled against the wall. Only a few stick. Yet the sheer number and velocity of the pitches made me giddy.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Hot Tub Time Machine zooms right by, barely pausing on its way out (like, mercifully, the '80s hair it depicts), forgotten almost before it's over.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
A perfect collision of high-energy and high-concept, Hot Tub benefits from near-complete lack of inhibition and a total immersion in dude-centered shenanigans.
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| Original Score: 4/5
... Unhinged, unrepentant and hilarious, unequivocally the best American comedy we've had in a long time. ... As a popcorn pop-culture snack for aging Gen-X'ers with their own memories and regrets, it's a fun, fast, fearless comedy.
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| Original Score: 4.5/5
At its best the film is blissfully, anarchically funny, and director Steve Pink keeps the pace crackling.
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.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Hot Tub Time Machine, which wants nothing more than to be a screwball farce, succeeds beyond any expectations suggested by the title and extends John Cusack's remarkable run.
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| Original Score: 3/4
What could be a platform for retro fun, inventive plotting, and outrageous humor instead becomes mired in tired time travel clichés, trite '80s shtick, and lazy comedy.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
A movie much different from what its title would suggest, which is kind of a shame, because the title is so super-awesome.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
The most attention-getting, stupid/brilliant high-concept title since Snakes on a Plane turns out to be the first and last memorable thing about Hot Tub Time Machine.
A potentially wry comedy about time travel plunges into a hot tub of tepid juvenilia.
I wish the screenwriters had been 2010-minded enough to leave out the crappy gay jokes. Then again, as directed by Cusack's longtime pal and collaborator Steve Pink, and performed with manic energy by this guys-among-guys cast, the movie bops and honks.
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| Original Score: B
A fundamentally lazy comedy that will probably make you laugh like an idiot.
The story rests too often on easy '80s potshots -- Look, a Jheri curl! Check out those leg-warmers! Can you hear me on my brick cell phone? -- and today's parlance falling on deaf '80s ears -- E-mail? What's that?
The kind of crummy-looking, exploitative, childishly gross and pointedly homophobic teen-sex comedy that was ubiquitous in the 1980s.
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| Original Score: 2/4
A sloppy, raucous, time travel farce in the grown-men-gone-wild Hangover style, it's a surprisingly satisfying, if not exactly LMAO, riot.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
You can treat the movie's devolution into sheer ridiculousness as either an homage to that era's high-concept absurdism or just whatever-dude laziness, but watching Cusack revive his trench-coated cool-misfit persona will stir fortysomething hearts.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
