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