Dead Man

For many years, if you asked me who my favorite actor was, I would immediately answer "Johnny Depp."  To date, I have seen 37 of his 42 films, and I have enjoyed most of them.  With the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, though, I have felt that Depp's roles have been significantly tamer than the glorious weirdness that marked his career from 1990-1998.  Just as I was starting to question whether or not Depp was still my favorite, I noticed that Dead Man was LAMB's Movie of the Month.  That was a good enough reason for me to revisit this film for the first time in fifteen years.

Dead Man is the story of Bill Blake (Johnny Depp), an accountant from Cleveland who has gone West to get over heartbreak and seize a business opportunity.  It turns out that the West he winds up in is significantly further West than he probably had anticipated; his train started with men in suits and well-dressed women, but as the miles wore on, the train car became populated with gruff drunkards with wild hair, animal skins, and lots and lots of guns. 

Blake's stop is at the very end of the line, in a town called Machine.  After taking in the sights (a horse pissing in the street, Gibby Haynes receiving oral sex in an alley, etc.), he heads to work.  Unfortunately, it took Blake too long to make the trip; since he received the letter guaranteeing his employment in Machine, another man has been hired for the post.  Blake tries to protest, but it does little good against his rough would-be employer, John Dickinson (Robert Mitchum).

You're not going to beat two barrels of Mitchum

Without enough money to return home, Blake is at a loss.  He manages to postpone making any real decisions when he befriends (in the Biblical sense) Thel (Mili Avital).  In their post-coital bliss, Thel's ex-boyfriend, Charlie Dickinson (Gabriel Byrne) walks in; he shoots at Blake, the bullet goes through Thel and lodges in Blake's chest, and Blake shoots Charlie in the neck.  Gravely wounded, Blake manages to grab his belongings, steals a horse, and wakes up lost in the woods with a fat Indian poking his wound with a knife. 

Not the ideal wake-up call

It's not as bad as you might think.  Well, maybe it is.  The Indian, Nobody (Gary Farmer) was trying to dig out the bullet (which was a pleasant surprise for Bill), but it is too close to his heart (which is bad news for Bill).  Blake is essentially living on borrowed time.  Meanwhile, John Dickinson hires a trio of murderous thugs to bring Blake back, alive or (preferably) dead and has wanted posters put up all around, offering a large cash reward.  What is an accountant to do in the wild, with every armed man in the West looking to kill him for money?  What do you do when you are a [clever use of the movie title]?

You cry lighting?

Dead Man was written and directed by Jim Jarmusch, and is the only film I have seen of his to date.  I was a little surprised by that, so if you have any Jarmusch recommendations, please leave me a comment.  If there is only one thing you can say about Dead Man, it is that it is definitely stylized.  The entire film is in black-and-white.  The passage of time is shown only through scenes fading to black, sometimes after only a few moments.  It has a very atypical score for a Western; Neil Young provides a sparse soundtrack, consisting almost entirely of harsh and abrupt electric guitar riffs.  This is not the Wild West from classic Hollywood Westerns, where you go West to find freedom and start anew.  Jarmusch's West is surreal and nightmarish.  I loved the direction in this film, and I thought the actors were all handled quite well.  As for the writing...well, I'll come back to that later.

The acting in Dead Man is good, although most of the surprisingly deep supporting cast is limited to shallow bit parts.  Johnny Depp is good as the perpetually out-of-his-depth Blake; what I liked best about his portrayal was just how much calmer and worldly Blake got as he approached death.  Gary Farmer was also very enjoyable as Blake's companion, Nobody.  The last film I watched that had a prominent Native American role in it was Windtalkers, so it was nice to see an ethnic character that wasn't a stereotype.  Lance Henriksen was good as a truly nasty killer, but he was overshadowed by Michael Wincott's gravel-voiced (and often surprisingly funny) chatterbox; Eugene Byrd was fine as the third hired killer, but he definitely had the least developed character in the bunch. 

If nothing else, Westerns typically deliver mean-looking bad guys

Robert Mitchum was pretty awesome as an elderly bad-ass in his few moments onscreen.  I also enjoyed Billy Bob Thornton, Jared Harris, and Iggy Pop as a bizarre trio of fur-traders.

Depp's paper rose is discussed in detail here.  Thankfully, Pop's dress and bonnet are not

The rest of the noteworthy cast (including Crispin Glover, John Hurt, Gabriel Byrne, and Alfred Molina) are certainly adequate, but their appearances generate more of a "is that who I think it is?" reaction than a "what a great performance!"

Dead Man is a dark, trippy, surreal and surprisingly funny Western.  It is sometimes referred to as an Acid Western, following the example of non-traditional Westerns from the 60s and 70s and turning the sense of dread from films like Ride in the Whirlwind into an extended nightmare.  The dialogue is crisp and clever, and the fact that the various Native Americans languages were not subtitled or translated only emphasized Blake's outsider status.  The first time I saw this movie, I was oblivious to William Blake, but now that I'm somewhat familiar with his work, I found Nobody's references and plan far more amusing and less random.  As much as I enjoyed most of Jarmusch's writing in Dead Man, I have one major complaint.  The story just seems to go on and on.  Don't get me wrong --- I enjoyed the film and the two hour running time wasn't excessive.  The story just didn't have much structure.  Blake heads West, gets shot and then another hour and a half go by.  As an exercise in style and fun writing, Dead Man is great, but it is lacking a story that makes you care.  Still, good performances, enjoyable writing and interesting direction makes this better than most movies, even if it is imperfect.

Alice In Wonderland (2010)

Tim Burton is one of my favorite directors, because he makes odd little films that somehow manage to become big hits.  I tend to prefer his more intimate work (Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Big Fish) over his obvious blockbusters (Batman, Planet of the Apes), but I always find his work interesting.  When you add my favorite actor and Burton collaborator, Johnny Depp, to the mix, you definitely have my attention.  Add those two oddballs to the fictional world of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, and you have a guaranteed formula for weirdness.

It should be pointed out that, despite the title, this actually isn't an adaptation or re-imagining of the source material, or even of the Disney animated classic.  Instead, it serves as a sequel of sorts.  This time around, Alice (Mia Wasikowska) is a teenager instead of a child.  Like all Wonderland stories, this one begins in the real world.  Alice is attending a party when she fields an unexpected (and unwanted) proposal for marriage; she is at the marrying age for Victorian England, and the match is sensible and proper.  And, in typical Tim Burton style, "sensible and proper" seem positively horrid, with madness being a preferable alternative.  Almost as if she is signaling for a rodeo clown to distract the bull away from her, Alice notices a white rabbit wearing a waistcoat.  Since her options are follow the rabbit or definitively choose a life path, the nineteen year-old Alice opts to follow the rabbit.  From here, things begin to get a little deja vu; Alice visits all the same places and meets all the same characters that she did in the original stories --- she eats stuff and grows/shrinks, she chases the White Rabbit (voiced by Michael Sheen), she goes to the Mad Hatter's (Johnny Depp) tea party, and gets confused by the Cheshire Cat (voiced by Stephen Fry) and the Caterpillar (voiced by Alan Rickman).  Alice seems to be going through these experiences for the first time, but something seems...different about everything.  The only clue we have that this is a new tale is the fact that all the the inhabitants of Underland (not Wonderland) remember an Alice from years ago.  It has even been prophesied that Alice will be the one to kill the Red Queen's (Helena Bonham Carter) fearsome dragon, the Jabberwocky (voiced by Christopher Lee).  Alice is supposed to kill a creature of Wonderland?  Well, that's different.  And, as this film insists, this really isn't Wonderland, but Underland.  What's the difference?  While both are filled with imaginative landscapes and characters, Underland is the nightmarish twin to the world of Wonderland; apparently, things were once shiny and happy, when the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) ruled, but things have gotten darker and more serious under the Red Queen's reign.  But is this Alice the Alice of the prophesy?  Or is this all something else, something darker?

Not too long ago, I read Lewis Carroll's works for the first time.  Frankly, I was underwhelmed.  I will admit to an unusual joy of language present in these stories, and some pretty interesting imagery, but I wasn't impressed on the whole.  In all honesty, I think that these stories are excellent launching points for adventures, but I am happy to see that most adaptations to the stories aren't slavishly devoted to the source material.  Obviously, then, I have no problem with Burton's Underland.  I do have a problem with the title, though.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I think that film titles are important indicators of the film's content; if I pop in a DVD titled Bambi, it had better be an animated deer story, and not a live-action bestiality flick.  Titling this Alice in Wonderland seems disingenuous to me, because the films goes to great lengths to differentiate itself from previous movie incarnations and the source material.  Alice in Underland would have been more appropriate, I think, and still drawn the connection to Wonderland.

The first thing that struck me about this film was its appearance.  Visually, this is a fantastic piece of moviemaking.  The environment, even though it is almost a post-apocalyptic version of Wonderland, is still full of color and detail.  The character designs were astounding, so different from the classic versions of the characters, and yet they all had something iconic that made them seem somehow familiar.  The use of CGI in the film was some of the best I have seen utilized in any motion picture.  Obviously, the environment was largely CGI, but most of the characters had something altered in post-production, some in subtle ways; Crispin Glover, who plays the Red Knave, had everything except his head replaced by CGI.  Tim Burton has always been a visual filmmaker, but this was really a step above anything else I've seen of his.

This film was chock full of recognizable actors, each of whom did a good job.  Many of them stuck to the classic interpretation of their characters, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.  Matt Lucas (Tweedledee and Tweedledum), Michael Sheen, Stephen Fry, and Alan Rickman were the principal actors who followed that practice.  There were several bit parts where I recognized the actor, but not the character.  Timothy Spall played a bloodhound, Michael Gough voiced a dodo bird, Crispin Glover was awkward as ever as the Knave, and Imelda Staunton was one of the talking flowers --- none of these were huge roles, but I found it interesting that such small parts were played by actors I have seen in so many other films.

Now let's talk about the departures from the norm.  For starters, Paul Whitehouse's March Hare had a dangerous edge to him that bordered on sociopathic.  While Christopher Lee's lines as the Jabberwocky fell in line with Carroll's poem, I'm not so sure about the use of this character as a fearsome enemy.  Anne Hathaway was okay as the White Queen, showing a few hints at bizarre character traits, but I don't think she had enough screen time to develop her character much.  Helena Bonham Carter had more screen time, but most of it was spent emphasizing how odd her character was and was, I think, supposed to generate more laughs than I gave it.  I felt that Mia Wasikowska did a pretty good job as Alice, making her one of the stronger heroines I've seen in a children's movie; I'm not entirely convinced that her "roll with the weirdness" attitude was the right one for a character entering Underland, but it was a choice and she stuck to it.  And then there's Johnny Depp.  The Mad Hatter isn't a character that is usually given depth, but here he has a back story and plays a critical role in the film.  To do that, Burton and Depp had to change the character significantly, and not just cosmetically (although his CGI/makeup was some of the most interesting in the film); this Hatter seems to have almost a split personality, with the harmless goofball character that is well known and a Scottish (I think) warrior character that is brand new.  I think Depp captured the mercurial nature of his character well, but his character is one of the aspects of this film that I found disappointing.

I have heard that Alice in Wonderland is not so much a children's story, so much as it is an acid trip told in nonsense rhymes.  Yes, this is a story that is typically aimed at children, and yes, this story does has some surreal nightmare qualities to it.  I think that balance lends itself nicely to Tim Burton's guiding hand; much of his work appears dark, but has a childlike quality at its core.  On the surface, this is a can't-miss concept.  In practice, though, all the visual effects in the world can't disguise the fact that the story in Alice in Wonderland is lacking.  There isn't a strong narrative, which shouldn't be a problem, since this is a story that should be about the wonders of this Underland.  But the whole movie builds toward a final battle that fails to do anything imaginative and ends up as a surprisingly dull action sequence.  Because this movie has that climax and they foreshadow it from the beginning, the rest of the story feels like an unstructured jumble that rambles on without much purpose.  Personally, I would have preferred a story where there was more rambling and a less typical climax.

With that story structure in place, though, Alice must be given motivation for trying to thwart the Red Queen's rule.  Since Alice is a stranger, that motivation has to come from the supporting cast, which ends up being the most prominent Underland inhabitant, The Mad Hatter.  I love me some Johnny Depp, and he is occasionally very charming in this role, but the militant edge to his character is left largely unexplained and his shifts into that persona are abrupt and unexplained.  This could have been circumvented if Alice had a personal stake in Underland, but she does not, and remains fairly dispassionate about the bizarre events surrounding her.

This movie just feels like ninety percent of the creative process focused on how the film would look, and maybe ten percent was spent on the story itself.  There are so many pieces of this film that work.  I liked all the voice acting and I didn't see a poor performance in the whole film.  I don't particularly like Depp or Mia Wasikowska's characters, but I think they both played their parts well.  There are all sorts of high concept issues brought up in this film (Colonialism, feminism, etc.), but I was happy to see these topics left without any explicit conclusions.  And let's not forget just how gorgeous this movie is.  Just looking at promotional posters for this movie makes me want to watch it again.  No, that's not right...they make me want my own production stills, framed and mounted on my wall.  I really liked a lot about this movie.  I just didn't like...well, the movie part of it.  With such a surprisingly limp emotional core, I was left unsatisfied with the film and extremely disappointed in Johnny Depp and Tim Burton.  The gorgeous peculiarity that is Alice in Wonderland is certainly worth viewing, but the story is inconsequential at best. 

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter

How naive we were back in 1984.  "The Final Chapter"?  Jason Voorhees has been in eight (seven if you're picky) more movies after this, so this isn't even close to being "Final."  Regardless of what the future held for the Friday the 13th franchise, this fourth movie really was intended by some to be the final Friday, or at least the final appearance of Jason.  As such, the filmmakers brought back special effects wizard Tom Savini to give Jason an appropriately gory and epic ending.

After a brief (and surprisingly effective) recap of the previous movies, the action picks up where it left off, at the barn where Part 3D ended.  Jason was dead and sent to the morgue.  Or was he?  Dead, I mean...he definitely went to the morgue.  The short answer is no, Jason was not dead; he survived his shoulder injury, being hanged and an axe to the forehead and he was pissed off, ready to avenge himself on...somebody, seemingly anybody.  After killing his way out of the morgue (including a great head ripping scene), Jason headed back toward Crystal Lake.  As luck would have it, a group of six teens (including a young Crispin Glover) just rented a house by the lake, right next door to the Jarvis family's (which include a young Corey Feldman) lake home.  The teens have their typical teen problems; they involve having sex, not having sex, and being good at sex.  The group's ranks are swelled by the addition of a pair of identical twin sisters who dress identically, and the group does some dancing, skinny dipping, and other naughty things until a mysterious visitor pays them a visit.  For whatever reason, Jason decides to pay a visit to the neighbors of these naughty teens, the Jarvii.  Big mistake, Jason.  You never take on a recognizable child actor in any movie, much less a horror flick.

I love this movie.  This is definitely one of the best slasher movies ever.  It doesn't have the direction of Halloween or the strong acting of...um...well, I can't think of any outstanding slasher movies for acting, but this is still a classic.  Why?  Because it hits all the right notes for what makes slasher movies fun to watch.  First, it has a nigh-unstoppable killer with unknown motives.  Second, it has a pretty decent, if dated, script with dialogue that doesn't sound out of place in a teen movie.  Third, it has sex; this definitely has the most boobies of any slasher movie I've seen (although, to be fair, most of them were in a 1920s-era stag film) and even a piar of man butts, for the ladies.  Finally, this movie has a lot of dead bodies; counting the killer himself, there are fourteen deaths in this movie (fifteen, if you count the dog that committed suicide) (seriously, that happened).

This is the first of the Jason Fridays to truly stand on its own.  Yes, it takes place the day after Part 3D, which takes place the day after Part II, which means that this movie occurs on Sunday, the 15th, 1986.  If you don't believe me, check my math.  Despite the strong ties to the previous two films, this movie makes no attempt to justify Jason's attacks or even explain how the hell he survived A) an axe wound to the head B) unnoticed after paramedics checked his corpse for vital signs.  Director Joseph Zito and co. must have just figured "to hell with it," and decided to waste no time getting this killing spree started.

One of the more unique aspects of this entry into the series is the Jarvis family (Trish, Tommy AKA Corey, and Mrs.).  For the first time in Friday history, Jason is killing people who were not in his way, teens, or around Camp Crystal Lake.  Instead, they are an apparently loving family with no obvious signs of drug use or any overt sexuality.  In fact, they seem like pleasant people.  And yet, Jason decides to eliminate them.  The characters were pretty decent, too, with Tommy having several interests, including the construction of some pretty sweet latex masks.  Having Tommy as one of the main characters was a brilliant move for two reasons; first, the stakes always seem higher in horror movies when kids can get killed, and second, the preteens who love to scare themselves by watching horror movies before they're supposed to need someone to identify with.  I'm not saying that we should add Jake Lloyd to the next Resident Evil, but good child actors can do great things in horror movies.  My goodness...does this mean the series finally has likable characters?  It's a milestone!

As I said before, the acting isn't great, but it's the best in the series so far.  Crispin Glover is definitely more Back to the Future-era than Willard-era, so he's not obviously weird, but he's pleasantly awkward.  Axel, the ill-fated morgue doctor who loves watching women's aerobics on television, was played to perfection (read: over-acting perfection) by Bruce Mahler.  Samantha, the girl voted Most Willing to Be Filmed Nude, was played with surprising competence by Judie Aronson.  The star is obviously Corey Feldman, who was in his child acting prime in 1984, when this was released.  He starts out as just a (weird, but mostly) regular kid, but his what-the-hell-made-you-think-that-would-work way of handling Jason toward the film's end was creepy looking as all get out.  Oh, and for the second straight movie, a fat person was used (and killed) for comic effect.  The rest of the cast is mediocre, but they're not distractingly bad.

"Not distractingly bad" isn't exactly an endorsement, but their acting works because the film is clearly just trying to be an awesome slasher pic.  Sometimes the dialogue becomes cliche (like when characters repeatedly call out somebody's name --- Johnny's dead, girl, you had better run), but these cliches belong in a quintessential slasher movie.  What's important in movies like this?  Certainly not the acting, but this movie over-performs for what it is.

Let's talk about what makes this movie great, though: violence.  There are a lot of kills in this movie, and many of them are of pretty solid quality.  One of the horny teens gets killed by a corkscrew, thus fulfilling his desire to get...well, you can finish that pun yourself.  The morgue doctor gets his head partially torn off by a bone saw before being rotated 180 degrees.  One of the twins is pulled out of a second story window and plummets to her death.  Only moments before, Jason had killed in the kitchen downstairs; that means he went outside, scaled the side of the building and waited by one window, with the hope that somebody would wander close enough for him to break through the glass and kill.  Jason Voorhees, you are wasted in Crystal Lake; with luck like that, you should be in Vegas, baby!  The best kill is definitely Jason's death, which involves the best on-screen head wound of the 80s, bar none.  This movie also features the most alarming death in the series, that of Gordon the dog; while it is up to some speculation, most people assume that Jason threw the dog out of a second story window; I like to think that the dog just said "you can't fire me, I quit!" and did it himself.  Still, it came out of left field for me and undoubtedly would alarm many pet lovers more than the dozen or so human murders in this film.

Being a slasher movie, though, there is of course more focus on the killings than the plot, so there is the normal amount of head-scratching moments.

• In the opening recap of the series; the way the filmmakers frame things, it looks like Jason was responsible for the kills in Part I.  That's inaccurate, of course, but it definitely simplifies the story, so I'm okay with that choice.  
• When we meet the Jarvis family, they are excited about the new kids renting the house next door, making no mention of the presumed deceased homicidal maniac that killed over twenty people in the last two days, just down the road from their home.  
• Pamela Voorhees' tombstone is seen on the side of the road; who paid for that burial, and why next to a road?  Did she kill there, or what?  
• A character, Rob, pops up in the middle of the film and explains that he wants to hunt down Jason (who is presumed dead still) because he murdered Rob's sister in Part II...which happened two days ago; Rob knows that two morgue workers went "missing" last night, and Jason's body is gone, so Rob is going to kill Jason himself, with a rifle and maybe a pocketknife.  First of all, where does this kid get his information?  Secondly, Rob deserves props for learning about his sister's death, traveling to the area of her murder, and not being satisfied with the killer being sent to the morgue.  Points for persistence, Rob!
• The murdered morgue people are just "missing"?  That means that Jason cleans up after himself.  Except when he doesn't.  It does explain why so few victims realize that they're in trouble before they die, though.  It also implies some sort of central corpse storage in the area, because Jason cleans up after himself, sure, but he also loves posing corpses in doorways to scare heroines.
• The handsomest guy in the movie (Peter Barton) is the love interest for the Sarah Jessica Parker look-alike.  Gross.
• Where did Jason pick up a nice, clean jumpsuit in his size, given all the hijinks he's been up to for the past few days?  I really would have liked to see him shopping in a Crystal Lake hardware store.

Despite these minor flaws, this is still an almost perfect slasher movie (for perfection, check out Freddy Vs. Jason) that gives a spectacular end to this franchise.  That end is not cheapened (much) by the fact that it is in no way the actual end of the series.  In fact, this Friday is actually the death of the original, humanoid, Jason.  After this film, there is no sympathy or excuses given for him and no pity for his disgusting face.  When Jason returns, it will be as a super-powered killer zombie...or something like that.  So, this marks the end of the Jason that can get hurt, run, and be killed by conventional weapons.  Think of this as the Viking funeral for the hardest working psychopath in show business.  To Valhalla, Jason!

Hot Tub Time Machine

I guess the big question with Hot Tub Time Machine is why anyone would ever need a review to tell them about this movie.  If the title doesn't explain it all to you, then what can I do to help?  It's a stupid title for a movie that has no intentions of being anything more or less than a stupid comedy.  To be completely honest, the gloriously stupid title (the best since Snakes On a Plane) would have been enough to convince me to watch this movie.  Adding in John Cusack and Craig Robinson is just icing on the cake.

The premise is that three one-time best friends are now eking out sad existences.  Adam's (Cusack) girlfriend has just moved out and apparently taken most of his belongings.  The only person he sees regularly is his nephew, Jacob (Clark Duke), who spends all his time in his basement room playing video games.  Nick (Robinson) is married to a controlling wife (who insisted he hyphenate his last named when they got married) and his job includes cleaning the feces out of rich people's dogs.  They are brought together when Lou (Rob Corddry), an alcoholic party animal, makes the mistake of revving his engine in time to Motley Crue's "Home Sweet Home" with the garage door closed.  Someone (who could this possibly be?  It's late at night, he lives alone, and the garage is closed!) saves his life and the hospital assumes that this was a failed suicide attempt.  Since Lou's family hates him and he has no real friends, his childhood buddies, Adam and Jacob, rally to his hospital bedside.  They don't talk to Lou any more because "he's an asshole," but they agree to take care of him because "he's [their] asshole."  If you don't have someone like that in your circle of friends, chances are, you're that guy.

Lou assures them that it was just an accident, but they decide that the best way to cheer up a hard-drinking forty year-old adolescent is to relive their youthful debauchery by visiting their old stomping grounds.  These stomping grounds happen to be a ski town that has all but been condemned; the town's stores are all out of business and their formerly hedonistic hotel is now filled with the elderly and their cats.  The group (which includes Jacob, for some reason) gets their old room, which comes with a broken hot tub.  The hotel repairman (Chevy Chase) fixes it so that glows with a yellow light that makes the water a suspicious shade of urine yellow, but the group strips down and gets hot tub drunk right away.

When they wake up, it is 1986.  The three friends now inhabit their eighteen year-old bodies and are at the bustling ski resort in the prime of their lives.  Jacob has also gone back in time, although no explanation is given as to how or why he is in his own modern day body.  The group is warned by the repairman not to change anything in the past, but that plan gets old fast.  Adam has the chance to avoid dumping the perfect girlfriend, Nick can redeem his musical dreams, Lou can drink a lot and try to get laid, and Jacob can try prevent his existence from being wiped out by the group changing the future.  There are a lot of 80s jokes, some gratuitous breasts, a few shots of Corddry's naked butt, and a lot of slapstick comedy.  Some of it works, some of it doesn't, but it's all pretty stupid.

For being so obviously dumb, this movie had some pretty solid direction.  Steve Pink is better known as a screenwriter (he wrote High Fidelity and Grosse Point Blank), but he has a gift for catching humor with his camera.  Some of that is obviously due to him giving the cast some leeway with their lines, but I'll give Pink credit for making this ridiculous movie not come off as amateurish.

The main cast is pretty good, too.  John Cusack is always likable in his movies, even though he hasn't made a great one in a while.  Craig Robinson is rapidly becoming a reliable quality gauge for stupid comedies.  His deadpanning into the camera the phrase "hot tub time machine" is worth seeing the movie for, just by itself.  Clark Duke plays a chubby nerd this time, expanding on his varied film credits that include "chubby dork," "chubby dweeb," and the adjective-less "nerd."  What will make or break your enjoyment of this movie is how much you like Rob Corddry.  Most of the film's humor comes from him, including every single cheap or gross-out joke in the script.  Personally, I got tired of him pretty quickly, but he still made me laugh on occasion, which I found impressive.  Usually, when I am turned off by a comedic character, there is no way back into my good graces (I'm judgmental like that), but his timing was good and some of his lines are brilliant.  He's really, really obnoxious, though.

The supporting cast is surprisingly full decent performances.  Of course, Chevy Chase has fun as the nutty/supernatural repairman, so he's decent enough.  Crispin Glover gets some laughs as a bellboy doomed to lose his arm...somehow.  Thomas Lennon has a cameo that is a little funny, I guess, but nothing special.  The young cast was surprisingly decent, too.  Sebastian Stan overacted as the stereotypical 80s movie ski jerk, but this isn't a movie that requires subtlety, so it worked well.  Similarly, Lyndsy Fonseca and Collette Wolfe played their ditzy snow bunny slut roles as well as the roles demanded.  Lizzy Caplan did well as Cusack's "true" love interest, and they managed to give the movie something a little deeper than a stupid slapstick comedy deserves.

Are there any flaws in this film?  Well, yeah.  But to detail the film's scientific and logical flaws is missing the point.  You don't think a movie titled Hot Tub Time Machine really cares do you?  If this sounds like a stupid movie, you're absolutely right.  It's dumb and embraces that level of cleverness fully.  It's definitely better than the title implies, but a lot of the jokes generate chuckles instead of laughs.  Admittedly, a big part of that for me was because I didn't really have fun with Rob Corddry's character, even though he had some of the film's best lines.  This movie's biggest flaw was in giving the bulk of the humor to the least likable character.  Corddry carried this film's humor, even though there were several other actors capable of chipping in.  I thought Craig Robinson was underused, despite his theoretically main character status.  Chevy Chase, Thomas Lennon and Crispin Glover could have done more, too.  As far as stupid slapstick goes, there are certainly worse movies to watch, but this just isn't funny enough to satisfy me.