March 26, 2010, - 5:19 pm
Weekend Box Office: “Hot Tub Time Machine,” “Chloe,” “Greenberg”
It’s another weekend to rent or watch a movie on demand. Nothing new at the box office is worth wasting ten bucks.
* “Hot Tub Time Machine“: The title should be a giant hint. It stinks. This movie tries really, really hard to be this year’s version of the equally bad, “The Hangover” (read my review). I couldn’t wait for it to be over. Crude, vulgar, crass, and stupid. That about sums it up. Wow, John Cusack (the biggest star in this movie) must really be desperate for a paycheck. Ditto for Chevy Chase, who makes a few brief appearances. I barely laughed. Mostly the jokes were cheesy and stupid. And the movie was largely an excuse to show multiple shots of topless women, fill a script with four letter words, and get royalties for desperate, balding former hair bands and one-hit wonders from the ’80s, whose songs make up the soundtrack.
The plot (if you can call it that): three guys used to be in a band in the ’80s. Now they are losers and nobodies and unhappy with how their lives turned out. One of them accidentally nearly kills himself in his garage. The other two take him and a nephew of one of the men to the ski resort where their band used to play in the ’80s. It’s decrepit and run-down, and not how they remembered it. While they are in the hot tub, they spill an energy drink on the tub’s controls and it turns into a time machine, which has transported them back to the 1980s.
The rest of the movie is stupid hijinks trying to make things right and get back to the present time. Frankly, I wish the dopes who made this flick were stuck in the ’80s and never became filmmakers. After seeing this movie, I could argue that my wish came true, but with poor results.
Simply more of the Hollywood garbage that signals America’s decline.
FOUR MARXES
* “Chloe“: What could have been an interesting thriller became instead a stupid reincarnation of “Fatal Attraction,” the lipstick lesbian edition. It seems like it was written merely as an excuse to show explicit lesbian sex scenes between a topless Amanda Seyfried and Julianne Moore, and give Seyfried filthy, graphic dialogue. The movie was absolutely horrible. The filmmakers spent more time on a style than substance, as the movie was beautiful to look at, but the script and subject matter was just nasty.
Moore plays an OB/GYN in Toronto who suspects her husband (Liam Neeson) of cheating on her. She hires prostitute Seyfried to come on to her husband and report back if he accepts the advances. Soon it becomes clear that things are not what they seem. I figured it out at the beginning of the movie, since it just wasn’t that sophisticated nor very interesting.
Skipworthy.
FOUR MARXES
* “Greenberg“: A mentally unstable brother (Ben Stiller) of a successful Hollywood figure comes to Los Angeles to stay at his brother’s home. His brother is on vacation and Stiller has just been released from a mental hospital. He is like an overgrown kid in the body of a 40-something man. He once was in a successful band on the brink of stardom, but was so selfish, he refused to sign the record deal and ruined his and everyone’s life. Now, all he has are old dreams and wishes he could be with the girl he dated as a teen.
Greenberg has an affair with his brother’s personal assistant and re-unites with old friends who have all grown up and don’t relate to him. I found this movie depressing, pointless, and a waste of time. Plus it was quite vulgar and crude in language and certain situations. On the other hand, I laughed a lot, and there are some good rants by Greenberg against the spoiled, self-centered college students of today.
Those, however, are not enough to change the fact that this movie isn’t worth the time or the money.
TWO MARXES
Tags: Amanda Seyfried, Ben Stiller, Chevy Chase, Chloe, Greenberg, Hot Tub Time Machine, John Cusack, Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson
Debbie’s movie reviews are hit-and-miss, but that’s teh case with most reviewers and their opinions. The only exception is she’s usually on the mark with panning the gratuitous T&A plopped in just about every >PG rated film these days (in G filsm, it’s the fart jokes that are now mandatory.) I don’t object to seeing T&A or flatulence in proper context, but having to put it every movie to placate the average midless dullard in the target audience spoils the creative aspect of cinematic art in general.
DS_ROCKS! on March 26, 2010 at 5:25 pm