By Mark HadleyFriday 30 Apr 2010MoviesReading Time: 2 minutes
Hot Tub Time Machine
RATING: M
DISTRIBUTOR: 20th Century Fox
RELEASE DATE: April 22nd
Hot Tub Time Machine traces the adventures of a group of former school friends who have become dissatisfied with their adult lives. A misadventure with a massive amount of alcohol and a ski resort hot tub throws them back into the 1980’s just at the point where their futures started to go wrong.
It’s a familiar plot that films have plumbed before and your appreciation will depend largely on how funny you find the jokes that link the scenes together. Personal reinvention repeatedly returns to the big screen because of our deep-seated dissatisfaction as human beings. “This is their chance to kick some past and change their futures – one will find a new love life, one will learn to stand up for himself with the ladies, one will find his mojo, and one will make sure he still exists!” – or so the promotion goes.
Hot Tub Time Machine delves into our deep desire to correct our mistakes – something that Hollywood seems happy to relegate to the area of science fiction. And the film’s heroes always find their way to that blessed future by following their hearts – forgetting that in reality it’s often our hearts that get us into trouble in the first place.
Thankfully you don’t need to find a hot tub time machine to transform your life. God offers to cover a lifetime of mistakes and though the reinvention may at times involve real pain, the result is far more satisfactory than this fanciful comedy.