Hot Tub Time Machine

Hot Tub Time Machine
Starring: John Cusack, Clark Duke, Craig Robinson
Director: Steve Pink
20th Century Fox
In Cinemas Now
Review by Charlotte Barnes

Hot Tub Time Machine follows a group of best friends who’ve become bored with their adult lives. Adam has been dumped by his girlfriend, Lou is a party guy who can’t find the party, Nick’s wife controls his every move and video game obsessed Jacob won’t leave his Uncle Adam’s basement. After a crazy night of drinking in a rundown ski resort hot tub, the men wake up, heads pounding, in the year 1986. This is their last chance to kick some arse in the past and change their futures! One will find a new love life, one will learn to stand up for himself with the ladies, one will find his mojo and one will make sure he still exists!

I have always had a love of 80’s films - anything from Ghostbusters to The Breakfast Club and I am a sucker for a good comedy Animal House and Superbad being amongst my favourites - so this film must be a winner right? Well it did make me laugh...

Let me set the record straight, I did not hate this movie. It surprised me how much I actually liked it. The script was quirky and funny and the John Cusak (Adam) and Rob Corddry (Lou) were very good. It just felt like it was trying too hard to be as funny as The Hangover as well as paying homage to Back to the Future. It was like all the ingredients were there for an excellent movie and somehow it just did not quite make it.

What was great about the film was the risqué writing, they weren’t afraid of their lead characters openly taking cocaine, saying "cunt" and having sex. It was very forthright something that had a very 80’s feel about it where they were openly offensive and just didn’t give a shit about the repercussions. The film wasn’t rude for the sake of it, it managed to walk that fine line between over the top and boring. The addition of Chevy Chase’s character was fantastic...because it was Chevy Chase, not because it added to the film. It would have been nice if they had given him a more dynamic role.

Jacob’s character played by Clark Duke, was clearly written for Michael Cera in mind, which was a shame because it automatically force Clark to play the awkward geek that is so stereotypical of a Michael Cera role. Having said that, Clark should have taken more ownership of his role and tailored it to suit his character. He is so wonderful when he play’s his Dale in the TV series Greek, why couldn’t he have brought more of that skill and instinct with him to this film? It is his character that just seems so flat in comparison to the other more experienced performers.

The Emotionally Fourteen Rating:
Violence: Some fisticuffs.
Sex/Nudity: Plenty.
Swearing: A surprising amount, but done with perfect comedy timing.
Summary: This is a fun movie, that I would recommend staying at home and watching. There were moments when it had me in stitches. 6/10

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The end begins with an unprecedented viral outbreak...

Morningstar: The infected are subject to delirium, fever, violent behaviour...and a one hundred per cent mortality rate.

But the end is only the beginning:

The victims return from death to walk the earth. When a massive military operation fails to contain the plague of the living dead, it escalates into a worldwide pandemic.

Now, a single law of nature dominates the global landscape:

Live or die, kill or be killed. On one side of the world, thosands of miles from home, a battle-hardened general surveys the remnants of his command: a young medic, a veteran photographer, a brash private, and dozens of refugees - all are his responsibility. While in the United States, an army colonel discovers the darker side of Morningstar and collaborates with a well-known journalist to leak the information to the public...

Thanks to our friends at Simon and Schuster, we've got six copies of Plague of the Dead to give away! For your chance of winning one, send us an e-mail with your name and postal address to plagueofthedeadgiveaway@yahoo.co.uk before midday on Thursday 20th May. The first six names drawn out of the electronic hat will win a free copy!

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To help them achieve their goal of taking over the world, a megalomaniac Japanese businessman and his son recruit a vicious gang of Geisha assassins. These include two feisty sisters with an amazing range of surgically added weapons.

But when one of these Robo-Geishas refuses to kill an innocent group of ex-employees, its butt-blades versus wig napalm and machine breasts against killer-cleaver socks as the assassins take on the Geisha’s in one of the most mind-bending movie battles of all time.

Throw in the buildings that bleed, the Giant Castle Robot and the Breast Milk From Hell, and you have a wonderfully insane Kamikaze movie that will have you laughing out loud!

Robo-Geisha is released on DVD (£15.99) and Blu-ray (£24.99) by Cine Asia on 7th June 2010.