The premise may seem far-fetched, but not if you consider that Morocco offered bomb-sniffing monkeys to the “coalition of the willing” for the Iraq War. The leader of the G-Force team is an unconventional human scientist named Ben. The guinea pigs are cast as racial stereotypes.
“Hot Tub Time Machine” is a sex-romp comedy that’s so unclean it needs a heavy dose of chlorine.
The movie starts out with token black guy Nick (Craig Robinson, the guy that plays Darryl from the Office), working at some sort of veterinary clinic, pulling someone’s car keys out of a dog’s ass. Somehow, I wouldn’t find it hard to believe that’s also where they found this script.
Nick and three of his closest friends (John Cusack, Rob Corddry) are all in some sort of rut. They’re all in their 40s and dealing with a mid-life crises. To escape their depression they revisit a ski resort they frequented in the prime of their youth. Upon arriving, they discover that they have a (insert title here) and can activate it by using a combination of secret ingredients.
Apparently all you need to bend time and space is a Russian soda, some vodka, and a magic squirrel, all which must be followed by some sort of weird acid trip that involves receiving a blow job from a bear. The time machine itself is a shameless rip-off of the “Back to the Future” franchise. The digital display is similar to the controls built into the Delorean. All they are missing is a flux capacitor, 86 mph, and 1.21 gigawatts.
Luckily for this flab-tastic four, time travelling has also resulted in them inhabiting their younger bodies. Fearing the risk of creating a time travel paradox more confusing than the plot of “Lost”, the friends pledge not to change anything in the past.
Predictably, they begin to become less faithful to this theory and instead seize upon the opportunity to get laid. Somehow they are less concerned for the safety of the space-time continuum than they are about scoring with crushes from two decades ago.
On that note, there is one time travelling mentor involved, but he appears randomly and disappears just when he is needed most. Dressed like a cable repair man, he proves just as unreliable.
“Hot Tub Time Machine” pays an uncalled-for homage to the crappy movie conventions of the 80s, especially the Ski flicks that defined a period of down-hill movie making. A few examples include Hot Dog, Ski School, Ski Patrol, Aspen Extreme, and Better off Dead. Mostly they just involve a bunch of jock-strap wearing bullies who treat the ski resort as their turf, and harass another group of teen skiers for kicks and giggles.
In this story, the paranoid leader of these jocks assumes that the main characters are Russian spies sent from the Soviet Union. Just because they have an energy drink product called “Cheronblyee”, and he cites “Red Dawn” as a plausible scenario. It might not be much to go on, but it is better than the shabby evidence that made the U.S. invade Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.
Eventually the four friends are able to return to the present, but thanks to one friend who stayed behind, everything has changed. By exploiting his knowledge of the future, he becomes a billionaire and enables his friends to become rich and successful as well.
One such exploit involved combining the popularity of Twitter with Viagra. The posts would probably look like this… “OMG, #bonerz has b33n going 4 hours !!!11”
It makes for a good moral to the story, that if you’re poor and miserable, all you have to do is go back in time to change your situation. Then you will be happy when you are rich and powerful.
Hot Tub is nothing more than an excuse to poke fun at the 80s by barraging us with as many pop culture references as possible. Somehow we find it laughable that there was a time when we didn’t know what an email was, phones didn’t play YouTube videos, and our video games came in 8-bit.
In another 30 years they’ll probably do a remake, the only difference being they make fun of this decade. I can just imagine some guy from the future looking at us like we’re a bunch of cavemen. The audience at that premiere will be laughing at us like a bunch of douche bags just because we have obsolete technology.
The background actors would probably be saying cheesy lines like…
“Hey you want to play some Wii or listen to Lady Gaga on my 8GB iPod?”
“Sure, let me just finish watching this Blu-Ray copy of Avatar.”
To us it’s just normal conversation, but by the standards of this film it’s comic genius.
G-Force is a furball of a film about guinea pigs who are trained to be spies, and somehow never makes a joke about Richard Gere.
Since the rodents are so inconspicuous, they are able to sneak into an enemy base and escape without detection. Not only that, but they are assisted by other animals, with insects doing recon, while a mole does the tech support.
The premise may seem far-fetched, but not if you consider that Morocco offered bomb-sniffing monkeys to the “coalition of the willing” for the Iraq War. The leader of the G-Force team is an unconventional human scientist named Ben. The guinea pigs are cast as racial stereotypes, with Tracey Morgan contributing his gangsta ‘tude, and Penelope Cruz parodying her Spanish accent more than the Taco Bell Chihuahua.
There is quickly a dispute between Ben and the FBI pending a budgetary review. As “cool” as the concept of spy guinea pigs may be, the federal government doubts that they offer any practical contribution to preventing terrorism. Perhaps they fear a reprisal from terrorists who’ve seen Snakes on a Plane.
So Ben decides to execute a pre-emptive infiltration of an evil corporation which is suspected of illicit activity. The ominous bad guy is a computer hacking CEO of the Saber Corporation. His evil plan involves using some sort of blue-tooth type technology to allow home appliances to be susceptible to a computer virus. At first, the team isn’t able to comprehend how manipulating home appliances would be used for evil. Clearly, these guys have never had to endure drinking a cup of burnt coffee. Anyways, they fail to obtain the data they need, and the sorely disappointed FBI shuts them down. Next thing you know, they’re in a pet shop – likely just avoiding a Chinese food kitchen.
Eventually two bratty siblings come to buy them, who seem to be the poster children for animal abuse. The brother throws one guinea pig into a cage with a hungry snake, and another is forced into daredevil stunts with a remote controlled car. The sister takes the girl guinea pig and dresses her up in more pink than Princess peach. The SPCA would gasp at such horrors, and should do everything within their power to arrest these monsters.
Luckily the G-Force escapes and gets back to the “plot”, as they discover the main purpose of the virus. Apparently, the appliances were robots in disguise, which transform into a mechanical army determined to exterminate humanity. A blatant rip off of Transformers ensues, and mechanical abominations made out of toasters and microwaves walk the earth. The only thing that would make it any tackier is if a few Cylon Centurions and Terminators started running around.
The film wraps up as they shut down the mechanical revolution with a counter virus. They prove themselves to the FBI as an essential asset and proudly celebrate their success with a disco party.
In conclusion, this movie seems like it was based on two lame franchises that were combined into one irritating hybrid. Disney probably realized it had lost the gravy train with its annoying Spy Kids sequels. So they decided to meld it with the recent popularity of the Alvin and the Chipmunk movies produced by Fox. So they end up with a ridiculous ad-lib script about Guinea-pig spies. They could’ve just as easily made it about Ninja Dolphins or Acrobat Koalas.
Either way, while no adult wants to see this CGI-rendered eye candy, no doubt their hyperactive kids will. Unfortunately, it holds no comparison to 007 or even MacGyver.