Hot Tub Time Machine

So often in life, you rarely know what you are getting. “Green Zone,” “Shutter Island” and “Bounty Hunter?” Too vague.

With a film like “Hot Tub Time Machine” you know exactly what you get. A warm — dare I say hot — tub of water and some sort of time travel, what else do you need to know?

John Cusack (“Pushing Tin”) Rob Corddry (“Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay”) and Craig Robinson (“Pineapple Express”) play three friends who have lost touch with each other over the years, until they are reunited after Corddry suffers a Motley Crue-related accident.

They decide to relive their glory days at the Kodiak Valley ski resort, and they take along Clark Duke, who plays Cusack’s nephew. During their night of debauchery, wires get crossed, energy drinks get spilled and the foursome wakes up 26 years in the past.

Cusack, Corddry and Robinson all have their own memories from Winterfest ’86, and they are tempted to change things for the better. The trio appears to everyone else to be in their early twenties, and Robinson even has the Kid ‘n Play high-top fade.

Each character has his own subplot to carry them through the movie. Cusack is trying to avoid breaking up with his then-girlfriend, Corddry is trying to avoid a beatdown at the hands of the ski patrol and Robinson is trying to make sure his band’s debut show goes smoother than it originally did.

This leaves Duke to try and get the group back to the present. He occasionally fluctuates in and out of existence, so he has a personal stake in making sure the past follows the same path.

The movie combines the inherent cheesiness of the classic 80s movies (many of which Cusack starred in) with the comedy that comes along with meeting people from your past, or in Duke’s case, his mother, who is in the midst of her hard-partying youth.

The group tries almost everything you would try if you went back to the 80s, betting on games you know the outcome of, telling ex-girlfriends how they got fat and so on.

As the three older guys try to atone for their mistakes, the movie has plenty of comedy and even a few touching moments, courtesy of Cusack and a journalist played by Lizzy Caplan (“Cloverfield”).

Cusack is almost there for nostalgia, he doesn’t get too many punch lines, and is really a secondary part of the plot. You may empathize with him more than any of the other characters, but he doesn’t get many laughs.

Cusack might be the heavy hitter when it comes to names, but the movie is really Corddry’s to carry the comedic weight. From his obsession in discovering how the hotel bellhop loses his arm, to his relationship with a certain squirrel at the resort, he wins every scene he’s in.

If you’re serious about the consequences of time travel, this isn’t the movie for you, as you will no doubt find paradox after paradox after the movie winds to its conclusion. But if you went to the movie to see a movie that examines the serious consequences of messing with the space-time continuum, you clearly only read the last two words of the title.

It doesn’t require much brainpower, it doesn’t make you think hard after its over, but that’s sort of the point when you call a movie “Hot Tub Time Machine.” It brings the funny for 100 minutes, and it’s a very entertaining ride.

Rating - $9.50

Visioneers

Let's get one thing out of the way. I love Zach Galifinakis. And I'm not saying that like someone who has only seen him in The Hangover. I mean it like I've seen his stand-ups (hilarious) and looked through some old movie roles.

Which is what brought me to Visioneers. I saw it under his name on my Netflix, and saw it was available instantly, so one Sunday, I decided to see what it was about.

Wow. That's the first impression. It was categorized under "comedy" on Netflix, and boy is that far from the truth. Further research indicated that it was a "black comedy" which seems to lend more gravitas to the film than it deserves.

The film is a bleak look at a corporate world taken to the extreme. It's Big Brother-ish, but you're not quite sure how serious to take it until later in the film.

Galifinakis plays a mid-level administrator who presides over his cramped, yet spacious room in "Level 3" (of 5, we assume). One of his co-workers recently exploded, as are people all over the place.

Zach finds himself experiencing the symptom of people who have been exploding, namely, dreams.

He also tries to track down a co-worker who he has feelings for, despite having never seen her, and dealing with his wife, who watches boring daytime television all day.

In three paragraphs, I described the extent of almost 45 minutes worth of the movie. Forty-two minutes go by in the movie without a single thing happening, so it's almost a relief when it does.

It is a very visually striking film, everything seems to be placed in the frame to strike an effect, and most shots last long enough (and don't have enough going on) that you can take time to appreciate it.

But thematically, the movie is really weak. I think it tries to make an artistic statement about the banality of modern life, but I'm not sure, and I certainly didn't get it.

It takes the approach that "less is more" and leaves a lot of blank space, which I guess you're supposed to fill with your own awesome, ground-breaking thoughts about modern life, and then transfer them to the movie, therefore thinking that the movie is echoing your thoughts.

Well, my thought's were "When the hell does this movie end?" and I literally counted down almost everyone of the film's 91 minutes.

It is well shot enough to make you think you're watching something artistic and important, but you're just not.

Galifinakis is pretty good, he gets a few laughs, and he fills a whole lot of conversations (especially with women) with silence.

Quite frankly, it's a boring movie, and you keep waiting for something to happen, and though things eventually pick up (slightly) and things get a bit more sinister, the conclusion is extremely unsatisfying, but it fits perfectly with the style of the movie.

High-art people might say "Oh, but you missed the whole point! The movie was boring because it was a statement about how office and modern culture is turning our lives boring!"

Sure, I get that. I also know that "Office Space" said that same thing, only it was actually amusing.

Rating - $2.00

She's Out of My League

When Bo Derek introduced us to the concept of a “10” in 1979, it brought a ranking system into popular cultures in which people were given a number, one through 10, to describe their attractiveness. More than 30 years later, sets of “rules” have come from the scale, and one such “rule” is what “She’s Out of My League” is based on.

According to a character in the film, one cannot go more than two points above themselves in any relationship. Enter Kirk Kettner, a TSA screener at the Pittsburgh International Airport and a “six” at best.

Baruchel is the latest leading man from the Judd Apatow family tree, much like stars Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and Jason Segal, Baruchel worked with Apatow in television, then worked as a supporting role in his films, before getting his own project.

He has that same sort of stumbling, awkward style of humor, but with his rail-skinny body and odd hairdos, he’s much more at the nerdy end of the spectrum.

While desperately trying to win back his ex-girlfriend after a two-year split, Kirk meets Molly, an event planner who is a “hard 10.” Molly misplaces her phone, Kirk finds it, and so begins a romance that threatens to turn the world upside down.

Kirk’s friend Stainer (played by T.J. Miller, best known as the cameraman in “Cloverfield”) tells him that the budding relationship is destined to fail, while Kirk’s other friends offer varying stages of bad advice and weak support.

The movie deals with Kirk’s struggle to accept the fact that this beautiful woman is interested in him, and his struggle to prevent the inevitable — her leaving him — from happening.

We get introduced to Molly’s lantern-jawed ex-boyfriend, a jet pilot, as well as Kirk’s family, each of whom serve no other purpose than to constantly remind him of the strangeness of the situation he’s in.

It’s the classic “fall for the nice guy” kind of movie, but it sort of works in this case. Molly is played by British actress Alice Eve, who is very attractive, but she’s also very down-to-earth, so it doesn’t seem like a terrible stretch.

While the story arc is the same as any romantic comedy, the story wins points because it puts the improv-style humor of Miller, Baruchel and others first. They all get time to say their piece, tell their stories at the bowling alley, the bar or wherever else the group finds themselves.

Nate Torrance, who plays Kirk’s portly, married friend Devon, is the gem of the film, he steals quite a few scenes, and in a movie rated “R” for language, his complete refusal to curse is both refreshing and off-putting in a funny way. This, combined with a few funny scenes with Kirk getting ready for his dates, fill out the movie where it could otherwise be filler. By the time the inevitable fight between Kirk and Molly comes and then the race-against-time reconciliation is happening, the movie is just wrapping up.

It makes the movie more of a comedy and less of a romance, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

The only problem is that the comedy doesn’t always deliver. They rely on a lot of the same old awkward guy gags that were done much better in films like “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.”

It’s entertaining for sure, but there are large gaps in the funny throughout the picture. Of course it tries to teach the whole “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” thing, but in the end, you walk out of the theater pretty sure that a skinny geek like Kirk couldn’t really get a hottie like Molly.

Rating - $7.50