Word: hotly
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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Four guys, three of them middle-aged, get into a hot tub at a scruffy ski resort they used to frequent in the 1980s. They get drunk, spill various liquids on the controls and are transported back in time to 1986 - a time when the youngest, Jacob (Clark Duke), has not yet been conceived but very soon will be, perhaps even within the 24 hours in which Hot Tub Time Machine takes place. (See photos of 35 years of stylish autos...
...Jacob is supposed to be 20. The movie includes a joke about Tiger Woods sexting, which places it squarely in 2010; if Jacob was conceived in early 1986 he should be 23. But whatever - Hot Tub Time Machine is not a durable good. If I saw it again tomorrow I would probably dwell on its lapses in continuity, its problematic plot seemingly held together with Silly Putty and whether, cinematically speaking, one really needs so many close-ups of dog poop, vomit and suspiciously manly fluids...
...That would be the dignified approach, but it would not represent the full truth of my Hot Tub Time Machine experience. Vomit, poop, etc. aside, the movie made me laugh as much as anything since The Hangover or the love scenes in Avatar. (Further disclosure: The two women seated to my left hardly laughed at all, and as the lights were coming up, one said to the other, loudly and pointedly, "I think it's more of a guy's movie." I tugged on my skirt hem and tried not to feel judged.) (See the 100 best movies...
...Hot Tub stars John Cusack, who, despite a natural tendency toward the dour, was one of the most delightful things to come out of the '80s. With the exception of 2000's High Fidelity, Cusack spent the aughts in a serious rut (Serendipity, Martian Child), so it's good to see him come back, even in something this ludicrous. He plays Adam, the semistraight man of the enterprise: reasonably successful in business but disastrous in love (his girlfriend just moved out) and in friendship, having long ago ceased calling his old pals Nick (The Office's very funny Craig Robinson...
Shabu-Ya, a Japanese and Korean eatery which opened in November 2008, is now the only restaurant in Harvard Square to serve shabu-shabu—or “hot pot”—style cuisine...