Two Torches (Out of Five)
I think I’m done with mainstream American film comedies for a while. They’ve just gotten too stupid for me.
The thing is, I was actually looking forward to Hot Tub Time Machine: four guys get in a hot tub that inexplicably takes them back to 1986.
It’s brilliant in its simplicity/stupidity.
But I guess I thought there would be something more to the movie — that there’d be something subversive or ironic about it. Or maybe I just hoped that the humor in the rest of the movie would live up to the admittedly hilarious title.
It doesn’t. When the four guys go back in time and are not sure what year they’re in, they stop and ask someone: “What color is Michael Jackson?”
Yeah, that tired old joke (clearly written before Jackson’s death).
Most of the jokes are along these lines.
If I was being charitable, I could say they’re doing this deliberately, trying to recreate one of the stupid sex comedies of the 1980s. The irony is in the lack of irony.
But the truth is, I think the people who wrote and made this movie just aren’t very smart or very funny.
It must be said: the movie isn’t as horrible as other recent comedies (*cough* Year One *cough*). I smiled a few times. I liked that they didn’t even bother to explain the hot tub time machine (but, of course, then they had to muck that joke up by having an unfunny Chevy Chase appear as a “hot tub repairman,” giving way-too-obvious exposition about what not to do and how to get home).
The movie is just completely mediocre. And man, has it been done before.
I don’t mind the vomit, s**t, and piss gags. Some of that is mildly amusing here.
But do the main characters have to be, yet again, a bunch of jerky, homophobic, middle-aged male losers? And literally every single female in the movie is either the generic “girlfriend” or a total adolescent sex fantasy.
Talk about going back in time. Wow, have we been there, done that.
Is this really where American film comedy has gone?
If so, put me in a hot tub time machine to the future, because I’m bored with the present.
Agree with you about movie comedies. TV is where it’s at. Go, Modern Family!