Hot Tub Time Machine 2 - 2015

"Hot Tub Time Machine 2" - 2015
Dir. by Steve Pink - 1 hr. 33 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

You know how, when you get a second album by a band you really liked, and only this time there's a new singer or a new guitarist, how that usually means trouble?  That.  Or like when your favorite basketball team suddenly trades away their borderline all-star who made everyone around him better, you know you're going to be in for a long season?  That, also.  In the world of "Hot Tub Time Machine 2," the key missing element would be John Cusack, who was also the only decent actor among the cast.  So when you remove the one guy who can act, and bring back everyone else...

What's left.

This time around, success is not enough for Lou (Rob Corddry), Nick (Craig Robinson), and Jacob (Clark Duke).  Lou goes off the deep end (or just continues his trajectory, more accurately), and ends up getting shot in the dick (yes, really) at his own party.  Since Lou has possession of the hot tub of extraordinary powers, all three hop in to try and head off Lou's impending assassination.  As it turns out, they end up ten years in the future, because they go where they're needed to be, not where they want to be. 

First off, the positives.  There are some funny bits here; it's not that the cast isn't funny, it's that they can't act.  So the dialogue is good, the timing is good, even some of the comedic premises and performances are good.  In particularly, I was laughing at a game show called "Choozy Doozy," a scene at an urgent care clinic, and there are good lines all the way through.  Adam Scott was funny in his role as John Cusack's straight-laced son.  This is far from the worst movie I've ever seen.  While I wasn't happy with it overall, there were parts I enjoyed, and it didn't drag too badly.

Three guesses which one the audience chooses...

But the first movie was unusual, partly because it felt a little more honest, which was partly due to building it around Cusack, who has the ability to make you think there's more going on than there is actually going on.  Even though the first installment was a "R-rated comedy," which has become a genre of it's own, seeing an unusual face like Cusack's involved lent credibility to the whole affair, suggesting that film was going to be a bit more than swearing, nudity, and copious irresponsible behavior.  Minus that, the sequel has to rely on the one-note asshole Lou and the wooden Nick as it's leads.  This does not work nearly as well.  Corddry at least seems committed to the role, Craig Robinson seems barely awake for much of the time.  I'm not exactly mad at anyone involved with the film; get your cash when it's on the table.

The second big issue I have is that the premise of the movie is unrelatable.  It's entirely believeable that people have regrets, and would gladly take a mulligan on some of their earlier behavior.  This time around, the characters actually debate trying again because they think they can do better than being worth $2.6 billion (Lou), and then have to prevent the least likable character from getting murdered.  Even Lou doesn't seem to care about preventing his own death; it's only the fact that he starts "flickering" when he goes off trail that keeps him sort of on-point.  So if they don't care and I don't care, who cares?

"Webber Strut"
After the first film, my working theory was that the characters were all doomed to failure because none of them could get anything right the first time, and that would ultimately catch up to all of them.  I guess I was right.  But all in all, this feels like when they killed off Vin Diesel's character in "xXx" because he didn't want to do a sequel, and then we got a shitty sequel that starred Ice Cube in such terrible shape he wore the equivalent of a parka for the entire film.  If Vin wanted to do another "xXx" film, I feel like it would happen in short order, but we'd all like to forget about that half-assed sequel.  If John Cusack ever wants to get involved with the "Hot Tub" series again, I'd be on board instantly.  Until then, no more awful half-measures, please.

1.5 / 5 - Streaming

Spies Like Us - 1985

"Spies Like Us" - 1985
Dir. by John Landis - 1 hr. 42 min.

Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

It's impossible for me to give a fair review of "Spies Like Us"; this was one of my favorite movies growing up.  So even though I'll try my hardest to present a decent look at it, ultimately I've already watched this movie dozens of times, and I'll probably end up watching it another dozen times before my days are over.  To kick things off, a song:

Soulfinger

A pair of CIA wannabes, Emmett Fitz-Hume (Chevy Chase) and Austin Millbarge (Dan Aykroyd) get a last-minute opportunity to take a test that would turn them both from desk jockeys to actual field agents.  Emmett is a classic BS artist (as most Chevy Chase characters are), and Austin is great with machinery and languages, but is languishing in a basement somewhere, doing someone else's work for them.  The test goes poorly (!), but the CIA decide to put Emmett and Austin in the field as decoys, to draw attention away from the actual operatives and operation.  Once they're air-dropped into Pakistan, they make their way to Afghanistan, all in the middle of the Cold War, trying not to get captured or killed along the way.

This film features a pretty prime performance by both Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd.  It's hard to think of a better Chevy Chase movie (maybe one of the first two "Vacation" films?), and Dan Aykroyd excels as the straight man to Chase's insincere motor-mouth character.  It's almost impossible to overstate how much Aykroyd owned this time period; his run from "Blues Brothers" through "Ghostbusters" and "Spies Like Us" is a stretch that most comedians would be envious of.  This duo is enough to justify the film, even if it's a little like "Stripes," minus any Bill Murray pep talks.  The story is good enough - it's a series of settings in which Chase and Aykroyd get to ply their craft, and is no more or less complicated than it needs to be.

One word scene.

So what's the downside to "Spies Like Us?"  Is there a downside to "Spies Like Us?"  Not really.  Yeah, it's an '80s comedy, and plays like one, but it's one of the better examples that kind of film.  You might not be partial to Chevy Chase, but this is one of his best roles.  And if you don't like Dan Aykroyd, you should probably go ahead and kick yourself in the crotch.  Get help if you need, but definitely get that done.  There are a number of great (!) scenes, like the doctor scene, or the test-taking scene, and everything moves pretty quickly aside from that.  There aren't any lulls in the movie, just set-ups and pay-offs, and it works well.

Like I said before, I've seen this film a ton of times, and I'll surely watch it another ton of times.  While all the other kids were watching Disney films, this is exactly what I grew up on.  It's cinematic comfort food.  I completely accept that your mileage might vary, but I'll probably judge you harshly if you disagree with me.  So let's just leave it at that.  I like "Spies Like Us."  You might too.  I hope you do, so that I don't have to dislike you.

3.5 / 5 - Blu-Ray

¡Three Amigos! - 1986

"¡Three Amigos!" - 1986
Dir. by John Landis - 1 hr. 44 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

There's a million reasons why I should love "Three Amigos" more than I do (and I'll be damned if I'm going to do the upside-down exclamation mark every time I mention the title).  I generally like Steve Martin and Chevy Chase, and the idea is a pretty good one.  But aside from my generally not liking Martin Short, I'm not sure why the whole thing doesn't click perfectly for me.  It's a good movie, but pretty far from my first choice to watch for anyone involved.  But it's not terrible.  It's just not "The Jerk."  Or "Spies Like Us."  or "The Blues Brothers."

During the Studio System years, three haughty actors, Lucky Day (Steve Martin), Dusty Bottoms (Chevy Chase), and Ned Nederlander (Martin Short) have a successful franchise, and want raises.  Boss Harry Flugleman (Joe Mantegna) fires them and throws them out of the studio, without even the suits they were wearing.  At the same time, a village in Mexico called Santo Poco is being tormented by El Guapo (Alfonso Arau) and his gang of bandits.  Carmen (Patrice Martinez) sees one of the Three Amigos films and mistakes it for a documentary, and writes a letter to the Amigos promising 100,000 pesos if they will come down to Mexico and deal with El Guapo.  Not having anything else to do, the Amigos steal back some clothes and head south.

Good stuff first: this is from the time when Steve Martin was doing straight comedy, as opposed to characters with a bit more angst mixed in.  He's 100% into comedy here, and there's a lot of charm to Martin's comedy.  Chevy Chase is pretty good here, too.  And this is the film in which I least mind having to deal with Martin Short (backhanded compliments are still compliments).  "Three Amigos" also, at times, feels like a love letter to the old way of making movies, shot on a studio lot, with the same band of character actors popping up to round out film after film, in sets that seem fairly familiar.  On the whole, an action/adventure/comedy without needlessly troubled characters is a pretty easy meal to digest, even if you're hungry again pretty quickly.

It feels like picking on the pedigree of these actors to say that one of the problems with "Three Amigos" is that it feels more like a series of sketches at times than a cohesive movie.  I think that most of us would have gotten as much out of this if the Amigos were a set of recurring characters on Saturday Night Live than as a full-length movie.  For me, probably the biggest laugh I got during the whole thing was that Chevy Chase played a character called Dusty Bottoms, which is so good that I kind of want that to be my alias from now on.  There's also a pretty good physical comedy scene where Lucky Day is chained up in a jail.  But those scenes (and really, most of the scenes), would work just as well independently of one another.  The characters aren't complicated, the set-up is very broad, and none of the humor comes from character development.  

"Three Amigos" works better in my memory than as an actual film-viewing experience for me.  Broadly, there are things that I really enjoyed (like the Three Amigos Salute, or their fancy faux-Nudie suits, or a dude named Dusty Bottoms), and it's pleasant enough, but I wanted, and expected more out of the people involved.  I didn't think that anything in the film (aside from the Steve Martin jail bit) pushed the concept into new territory, or delivered anything unexpected.  "Three Amigos" is pretty much the film that, if you watched the trailer, you would imagine that you would get.  That's not upsetting, it's still pretty decent (and rewatchable), and not everyone knocks every project out of the park every time.  

3 / 5 - TV (HD)

Hot Tub Time Machine - 2010

"Hot Tub Time Machine" - 2010
Dir. by Steve Pink - 1 hr. 41 min.

Official Red Band Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Now that I've watched "Hot Tub Time Machine" a handful of times, I think this might be one of the darkest comedies ever committed to film.  Part of that is John Cusack; no matter the film, he always seems to have a cloud hanging over his head (and is still completely watchable, which is his magic trick).  But the entire premise is completely messed up, and as jammed full of real, relatable human misery as I've ever seen, and is still riotously hilarious.

A frayed group of miserable friends in their forties is reunited when one of them, Lou (Rob Corddry) described as being "an asshole, but he's our asshole," lands in the hospital what maybe possibly could have been a suicide attempt (he was drunk, and left the car running in his garage.  His friends, Nick (Craig Robinson) and Adam (John Cusack), plus Adam's nephew, Jacob (Clark Duke) plan a weekend bacchanal at Kodiak Valley Ski Resort.  Upon arrival, they find out that the resort has decayed a bit from its glory days during their collective youth.  They charge forward, and spend the night punishing the hell out of their livers, and wake up in their suite's hot tub. The tub has somehow transported the crew back to 1986, giving them a chance to relive one of their greatest weekends (for most of them).

First off, all of the characters are completely miserable, and it's not some vague malaise that can't quite be defined.  Nick works at a dog-groomer's, fishing keys out of the wrong end of dogs, having given up on the music career he sought as a teenager at his wife's request.  Adam has just broken up with a long-term girlfriend, and not in a painless way.  Jacob is isolated in Adam's basement, content with playing Second Life even though his character has been imprisoned within the game, and barely aware that someone in his own house has moved out.  And Lou has taken the drifting apart of his friends and resulting isolation very, very hard.  These are all real-life situations that people may find themselves in, and not knowing how to get out of.

In 1986, though, at a mysterious janitor's (Chevy Chase) insistence, they all have to relive the weekend exactly the way that it happened.  The weekend had a nostalgic haze over it, but this isn't a great deal for any of them (not to mention Jacob, who wasn't even born, and thus is completely bewildered by the 80s).  Adam has to break up with the girl that he'd always regretted breaking up with (and get stabbed in the eye with a fork), Lou has multiple ass-beatings in his immediate future, and since Nick had managed to pull a groupie after his mediocre singing performance, it dredges up some intense emotions regarding his current marital situation (and he cries all the way through the sex).  It doesn't take any of them very long to go into business for themselves, regardless of the consequences.

But for the most part, things end up with the same results, regardless of the details of how each of them arrives at the end of their road.  And this is the message of the film: you cannot escape your destiny.  But the opportunity does arise for one of them to break free; Lou admits that he was trying to kill himself, and didn't want to return to the future, knowing that he'll just keeping trying until he gets it right.  When the rest of them do return to the future, it turns out that Lou had used all of his "future knowledge" to make a fortune.  In the present day, we now have Lougle and Motley Lue, and he's used his fortune to help his friends see out their  dreams as well.

This is where the film turns so black for me; Lou only succeeds because he's given a second chance and has insider knowledge.  But every last one of these characters has screwed up everything they do on the first pass.  Once they've outlived what they already knew, and don't know what bad choices they have to avoid, they're sure to screw everything up all over again.  And although the film ends on a high point for all involved (and then with a kick-ass Motley Lue video for "Home Sweet Home"), if you've paid attention at all to what the story has been telling you, this is only a momentary success for these men.  And the fall will be even harder this time, since they've all had to be rescued from their own failures once before, tasted mead in Valhalla, and then have to return to being failures.  You cannot escape your destiny, no matter what roads you take to get there.

There's no end of really funny material here, even upon repeat viewings (I think I'm up to four or five times around now).  But if you're in a bad mood, or feeling nostalgic for when you actually used to see your friends, those are the wrong frames of mind to watch "Hot Tub Time Machine" in.  Laughter is supposed to help you out, but the downer message really stuck with me this time around.  But that doesn't diminish the movie in any way, grounding the characters so successfully makes the good times feel a little bit better.

3.5 / 5 - DVD

Fletch Lives - 1989

"Fletch Lives" - 1989
Dir. by Michael Ritchie - 1 hr. 35 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Fletch may live, but save Chevy Chase playing the lead character, this film doesn't have a ton in common with the first film.  And the things that it does share, I kind of wish that it didn't.  "Fletch Lives" is a sequel to "Fletch," and carries over having the main character dressing up in disguise and giving outlandish names, as well as a tone that undermines the detective story angle of the films.

We find Fletch (Chevy Chase) in the middle of another undercover investigation, this time in an Italian restaurant that appears to be funneling mob money (these things aren't very clear, nor is the reason why Fletch, a writer for a Los Angeles newspaper, is doing the sort of thing that the police ought to be doing).  After getting the evidence he needs and returning to the office, Fletch discovers that he's inherited an estate in Louisiana from a long-lost relative.  He immediately quits and heads south to claim his property.  Unfortunately, he finds himself under pressure and in the middle of some larger plan designed to separate Fletch from his property.

Good detective series make you want to return to a specific world, and having completely failed to establish a world that anyone would want to re-visit in the first installment, most of "Fletch Lives" is set in a small Louisiana town.  This is a step in the right direction - at least, this provides a cast of very specific characters to play off of that don't require a lot of explanation.  Although Los Angeles could provide the same, that wasn't taken advantage of in the first film.  Here, before Fletch even at Belle Isle, he has a "Song of the South"-type dream sequence while flying there, complete with animated animals.  Once in Louisiana, there's a band of inept Ku Klux Klan members, slow-talking, gentlemanly lawyers, good ol' boys, lazy help, bikers, holy rollers...  everything you'd find in a Lego "Southern Living" starter kit.  That's okay, this is slightly more comedy than detective story, so comedic tropes help out matters.

Also, "Fletch Lives" takes a half-step in the right direction regarding the tone of the film.  It's still not successful, and I think that Chase's portrayal of Fletch as just becoming a little more dickish when under pressure doesn't work, but the other characters have a little more room to breathe.  A couple of them actually get the chance to run with the ball - R. Lee Ermey plays Reverend Jimmy Lee Farnsworth (a Jim Bakker stand-in, and released the same year as "Full Metal Jacket," which blows my mind), and Randall "Tex" Cobb plays a hirsute thug who introduces himself by letting Fletch know that he's in jail for "molesting a dead horse."  And Cleavon Little has a decent role as the apparently dim-witted Calculus Entropy.  The Fletch character plays a lot better when people are able to either play along or against him, and it's a shame that nobody figured that out until film #2 in the series.  Also, by embracing a running joke (the brakes on Fletch's inherited pink Cadillac don't work, so he always ends up stopping by running into something inanimate), it's clearer that we're meant to laugh (and not take Fletch's seeming unawareness of danger at face value).

I think that "Fletch Lives" is a better film than "Fletch."  The funniest material is light years ahead of the highs of the first film (the Bibleland material in particular), and I wasn't as actively annoyed by the problems with the second film, either.  But it's still not a good film.  As a comedy, it's okay at best, and as a detective story, there's little suspense.  I don't know if it's a script issue or an acting issue, but the fact that Chase as Fletch never seems the slightest bit concerned about whatever is hanging over his head doesn't play as a devil-may-care attitude, it simply undercuts all dramatic tension (and not in service of anything else more important, either).  If a guy's got the opportunity to dress up as a maid or with false teeth, why would an audience care about anything, either?  Fletch clearly doesn't take anyone else seriously, but in a way that removes the villains' fangs.  Seeing as how both director and star made the same mistake in two films running, it looks more like a mutual inability to tell this sort of story than a fluke.

2 / 5 - TV

Fletch - 1985

"Fletch" - 1985
Dir. by Michael Ritchie - 1 hr. 38 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

A serious question: how much do you dock a movie for not aging particularly well?  I guess that's not even entirely accurate, it's more of a question of whether one should take into account when a film was made, even if that means forgiving some things that seem really, really goofy in the present day?  I know that not every film is going to age well (particularly comedies), but the development over the last twenty-seven years of this particular type of comedy character kind of makes "Fletch" look rudimentary.

Irwin "Fletch" Fletcher (Chevy Chase) is a newspaper reporter, currently undercover on the beaches of Los Angeles, trying to crack open a story about who is pushing drugs on the beaches.  "Fletch" is a pseudo-detective story (the tone is supposed to be funny, not dire), so he's constantly clashing with his boss, drives a beat-up shit-wagon, is hounded by his ex-wife's lawyer for past-due alimony, is threatened by the police chief (Joe Don Baker), and quickly gets dragged into a scheme, where a rich businessman hires Fletch to murder him (it's an insurance scam).  Since this is a comedy primarily, it's worth mentioning that Fletch's shtick is to don disguises, offer up false names, and motor-mouth his way through every situation.

Before I get into my problems with "Fletch," let's throw a little praise.  It's a fast-paced comedy, and the plot actually works to propel the film from beginning to end (instead of wrapping everything up in the last fifteen minutes after spending the previous hour-plus ignoring the plot).  Also, there's a few familiar faces here and there, like Geena Davis and George Wendt, which is part of the fun of watching non-contemporary films.  More fun - seeing what Los Angeles looked like a bunch of years ago.

I don't want to imply that "Fletch" doesn't work, exactly.  It's just that, in the intervening years, the comedic crux of this film has been, shall we say, borrowed, and to better effect.  If you want to watch someone dress in costumes and play different characters, why not enjoy Roger (the alien) from "American Dad?"  If you want to watch a smart-ass detective bluff his way through solving crimes, perhaps "Psych" would be a good TV show to watch.  And to the point, "Psych" is a superior evolution to "Fletch."  Having a main character to play off of makes the difference between two friends playing and one person big-footing everyone in sight.  Here, it felt like Chevy Chase was delivering at least eighty-percent of the film's dialogue.  Largely, the other characters don't matter; they're all drowned out by Fletch's incessant chattering.  Perhaps that's the point, though.

At the time "Fletch" was released, Chevy Chase was a big comedy star, and no doubt the humor would have played better.  Age has taken it's toll on that aspect, changing what was probably viewed as a glib film into one that feels a bit desperate.  Desperate in the sense that Chase's character is being hounded on all sides, and his non-stop repartee feels like an attempt to keep any of it from sinking in.  If he can't hear anything but his own voice, then the rest of it isn't really real.  Even the romance sub-plot doesn't give off any sparks, because Fletch is too busy trying to make everyone else look stupid for not knowing who Ted Nugent is, for instance.  With everything else in his life in shambles, being a little smarter than everyone else is all that Fletch has left to hang on to.  I've found this when watching other older comedies: once the humor fades away, what's left is an entirely different film.

And how about those things that are really dated, and kind of detract from the experience of watching "Fletch?"  I'll stick with two: opening/ending credits, and the soundtrack.  I'm sure at the time, the synthesizer soundtrack didn't sound out of place, but let me assure you, it's not only out of place, but really awful, too.  It keeps popping back up in transition shots, trying to remind you that, ha ha, this is a comedy!  But since a lot of the humor has been eroded by time, it works against the film that a current audience would see.  And in a related issue, the film begins with a bad 1980s synth-pop song running over a black screen, while what feels like the entire cast's credits run.  Instead of starting off with a bang, it would be easy for someone to think that someone else had forgotten to rewind the VHS tape before they returned it, and that you were at the end of the movie.  And the end credits?  Have you ever wanted to see the credits run over a series of still shots of Chevy Chase mugging from all of the scenes throughout "Fletch?"  If so, you're in luck.  I mean, that's what you'll get to see, not that it's awesome, or anything other than unbearable.

I had a fond recollection of "Fletch," but upon this re-watching, it's apparent that Chevy Chase could have used a little help along the way with this one.  But he has no one to play off of, no one really gets the chance to do more than be the straw men that they need to be in order for the story to play out.  It's not as if "Fletch" is horrible or anything, but there are certainly better Chevy Chase films out there.

2 / 5 - TV