Hot Tub Time Machine: Critic Reviews

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.

It's fun, it's sad, and it's kind of sad that it's so much fun.

No real sparks of genius, but some reasonable laughs.

For hilarity, characterization and clever structure, The Hangover is far superior. Still, there are some laughs in this uneven but good-natured raunchfest.

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.

A reverent, foulmouthed, shoddily shot ode to the bottom-feeding cinema of the Reagan era.

A fundamentally lazy comedy that will probably make you laugh like an idiot.

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.

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.

Tough going, for sure.

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.

... 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.

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.

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.

Director Steve Pink offsets the satire with moments of genuine warmth.

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.

Hot Tub Time Machine is a surprisingly enjoyable way to waste 90 minutes if you're into dude humor and penis jokes.

The name says it all.

A movie much different from what its title would suggest, which is kind of a shame, because the title is so super-awesome.

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.

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.

A sloppy, raucous, time travel farce in the grown-men-gone-wild Hangover style, it's a surprisingly satisfying, if not exactly LMAO, riot.

Like the wonky Jacuzzi that gives the film its title and nutso travel mode, Hot Tub Time Machine operates in fits and starts.

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.