Movie Review Monday: Hot Tub Time Machine 2
Welcome to another edition of Movie Review Monday!
This week's film is the 2015 comedy Hot Tub Time Machine 2, starring Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, and Adam Scott.
Following the moderate success of the oddball original, in true Hollywood fashion we got a sequel that no one asked for (five years later no less) that suffers from the law of diminishing returns. I enjoyed the first Hot Tub Time Machine (HTTM) enough to apparently have me be curious enough to check out the sequel, which is now available to stream instantly on Hulu and Amazon Prime.
Part of my curiosity comes from enjoying time travel stories, the other part comes from enjoying self-aware comedies, which seem to be having a moment right now with stuff such as the TV show Community and the Jump Street movies to name a few. This is certainly not as good as either of these two examples, but it was still a decent movie with a few good moments. I am a big fan of Adam Scott (especially his work on Parks and Rec) so he was a draw to check this out as well. He is a bright spot in his supporting role, and the main cast holds things together pretty well too. The plot of movie is where everything falls apart.
The crew sort of meanders their way through the film, not having much urgency or direction. The premise of them being in the future versus being in the past gives some space to play around, but they also stumble in their sense of logic since they only go ten years into the future but the world is a dramatically different place from where they came. I get that we have a lot of technology coming out all the time, but some the leaps HTTM2 makes are silly, but that isn't really the point of the film already short on logic (we are traveling through time in a hot tub after all).
I'd recommend this movie with reservations only to folks who like me, enjoyed the first one to some extent and enjoy (most of the time) these sorts of comedies. I would not have liked it as much if I had to pay straight up for it as a rental or at the theater, but for something to just put on and enjoy without having to think too much, this is a solid option.