This time travel buddy comedy is about a threesome of high school friends as adults living out their apparently miserable lives. Adam, played by John Cusack, is going through divorce and doesn’t seem to even care. His computer nerd nephew Jacob, played by Clark Duke, lives with him in the basement because Jacob’s mom is a druggie drunken whore. Craig Robinson plays Nick, a failed rapper in his youth, now works at a pet grooming salon and does not own a man card anymore. He even took his wife’s last name when they were married. Rob Corddry plays an alcoholic dickhead named Lou, that just wants to party and rehash the times of his youth.
The event that brings the estranged friends back together is when Lou passes out drunk in his car while its running in his garage. It appears to police to be an apparent suicide attempt. So Adam and Nick decide to cheer up Lou and drag Jacob along too, to Kodiak Valley. A beautiful ski resort town where they had some of the best and worst times of their lives, except Jacob of course. He wasn’t born yet.
They soon discover upon arrival that Kodiak Valley just aint the same. The resort is run down and dilapidated as well as the town. The four are shown to their room by a very rude and disgruntled one-armed bellhop, played by Crispin Glover. They decide to make the best of it anyway and start getting hammered. Eventually they get into a hot tub that at first was disgusting then after calling for it to be repaired, magically it was clean hours later. As they get drunk, Lou spills some plutonium laced Russian energy drink on the control panel and BAM! The hot tub becomes a time machine. After some of the initial disbelief, they figure out they have traveled back to the “K-Val Winterfest 1986″, the weekend that shaped the rest of their lives forever. Guided on this journey, was very vague advisor that leaves you asking more questions than he is answering, is the repairman, played by Chevy Chase. Then all the cliche shit that happens in a time travel movie ensues but they must get back to the hot tub by the end of the festival or be stuck in the past.
Man oh man, I am really having a hard time describing what I thought of this movie, so here it goes. Being a person that was a teenager in the 80′s I figured this would be pretty funny to watch. There were parts that were funny but as a whole not really. Corddry’s character Lou stole the show. The funniest parts were the bellhop had both arms in 86′, so every scene he is in, his arm is always in jeopardy. There is a time traveling squirrel too, but I won’t say anymore about that. However, the movie is just a mish mash of different 80′s themes thrown together at a ski resort and them reliving their lives trying not to change the future but inevitably do.
I mean they throw in a hot tub and made it a time machine. Had Chevy Chase play some kind of unhelpful time lord. His character just made no sense and the movie never even tried to explain how the repairman knew about them and how he knew what was going on. It was just thrown together I think to make a really bad time travel comedy, because we haven’t had one since 1985′s Back to the Future, which was the greatest! I just found the movie really kind of silly and not real funny. It had some good moments but not many. You rent it and you be the judge but I would wait till a friend has it, then borrow it or watch it on cable. Oh the sacrifices I make.
I give this movie 2 Beers.
