It’s back to the year after Back to the Future came out (1986) in this should-be winner of a truth-in-titling award. No awards for originality, though. It superficially reproduces the foursome in The Hangover: the regular guy (John Cusack), who’s been dumped by his girlfriend; the wild-and-crazy one (Rob Corddry), who’s also a possibly suicidal alcoholic; the pussy-whipped husband (Craig Robinson), who we know is pussy-whipped solely because—horrors!—he’s taken his wife’s last name; and the socially inept one, who’s also the regular guy’s young nephew. The vibe the movie has is more like that of Wild Hogs, though—middle-aged dudes trying to recapture their fading youth as a bunch of crazy shit happens. The nephew character maybe helps with the teen demographic.
But obviously the movie that this most directly lifts from is Back to the Future, even to the point of having that film’s dad, Crispin Glover, play a surly bellhop whose loss of an arm becomes the subject of a running gag. (The setting is a ski lodge.) And there’s a bit where one character is sarcastically called “McFly.” So let us compare. First things is, BTtF uses a crazy inventor’s machine to transport Marty McFly back to a particular day in 1955, and precisely follows its own logic in getting him back to 1985. The time-travel premise here’s more sloppily executed. The three grown men turn into their younger selves (but we see the same actors, except when they look in mirrors), so it makes no sense that the nephew looks the same. Presumably they have thus already altered the future, so their efforts to reenact the night as it originally happened (so as not to do so) are doomed. And neither the faulty hot tub, the beverage that spills on it, nor the nonsensical Chevy Chase cameo in any way explain why they go back in time, or why to that day, except that the plot requires it.
Look, I know it’s a comedy, not a sci-fi film, and a certain amount of suspension-of-disbelief is warranted. But still, one suspects the title predated the entire script, and that little time was spent on how the hot tub would actually be a time machine. And a comedy should be allowed to violate the rules of physics, but BttF is brilliant because it doesn’t violate the rules it sets up for itself. As with the nephew staying the same age, this movie does it several times. Internal logic makes every thing else about BttF seem cleverer.
Though sometimes funny, this isn’t so clever and has too many jokes about (and sights of) bodily fluids and homosexual panic (the modern substitute for jokes about actual homosexuals). A little better are the inevitable ones about being able to predict the future, themselves predictable but fun. And when, just like Marty McFly, the nephew gets to meet his own parents, his discovery that his mom was a woman of…easy virtue is nearly inspired. Also just like Marty, the husband plays in a band and introduces folks to the sounds of the future—more successfully, but less humorously.
If you're the right age, the sights and sounds of overproduced music and questionable fashion choices should bring a tinge of nostalgia. Otherwise, this would suffice as a lightweight time-waster should it happen to appear on cable one day.
IMDB link
viewed 3/2/10 at Ritz East [PFS screening] and reviewed 3/26/10
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