Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (2015)

Director: Steve Pink

Cast: Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, Clark Duke

Synopsis: When Lou finds himself in trouble, Nick and Jacob fire up the hot tub time machine in an attempt to get back to the past. But they inadvertently land in the future with Adam Jr. Now they have to alter the future in order to save the past – which is really the present.

Steve Pink’s sequel to his surprise 2010 hit Hot Tub Time Machine, sees Lou (Rob Corddry – Warm Bodies) and Nick (Craig Robinson – This is the End, Get On Up) exploiting their knowledge of the future thanks to the events of the first movie to enjoy lavish lifestyles stolen from the labours of others.   Not only is Lou the lead singer of heavy metal band Motley Lou, but also the founder of the search engine, Lougle.   Meanwhile, Nick has enjoyed a thirty-year-long string of pop hits by making his own version of songs from the previous timeline which are yet to be written in the one he is now living.   Only Lou’s son, Jacob (Clark Duke – Kick-Ass, A.C.O.D.) has failed to capitalise on his knowledge of future events, and endures life as his father’s man-servant in all but name.   Unfortunately, success has turned Lou into an arrogant megalomaniac who has made a number of enemies over the years.   So, when he’s shot in the pecker by an unknown assailant, the suspects are plentiful.

Nick and Jacob haul the dying Lou into the hot tub time machine, intending to transport him to the past so that he can avoid receiving his fatal wound, but they somehow end up travelling ten years into the future.   Here they find that Lou’s house is now Jacob’s, that Lou is an eccentric and prematurely-aged old man, and that Nick’s career is on the skids.   Having determined that Lou’s killer must have travelled from the future to commit the killing, the three seek to learn his identity before Lou literally flickers out of existence.   They’re helped in their mission by Adam (Adam Scott – Piranha 3D, The Overnight), the son and namesake of the trio’s former time-travelling companion (John Cusack, who appears here in photographs only).

Although released five years after the first Hot Tub movie, Hot Tub Time Machine 2 has the feel of a sequel hurriedly released to cash in on an unexpected hit.   Adam Scott is a rather lightweight replacement for Cusack, and while the movie does manage to conjure up a few laughs, it’s relentlessly juvenile humour eventually proves to be its undoing.   A ‘virtual’ homosexual tryst on a live TV game show is the lowest point, although that dubious honour is hotly contested by Nick and Lou receiving a face full of the contents of Scott’s grotesquely swollen testicles during a surgical procedure.   While Hot Tub Time Machine 2 might not be a complete waste of your time,  neither is it a particularly productive use of it.

(Reviewed 18th December 2015)