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Hot Tub Time Machine | 2010 | R | - 8.5.10
Three men (John Cusack, Rob Corddry and Craig Robinson), best friends in their youth, are reunited when one of them ends up in the hospital after an accident. Hoping to cheer the man up, they plan a trip to their favorite ski spot, but when they arrive, it becomes clear how disappointed they all are with the direction of their lives. They may get a second chance when while spending an evening sitting in a hot tub, they go back in time to the 1980s. Also with Clark Duke, Lizzy Caplan, Crispin Glover, Chevy Chase, Sebastian Stan, Kellee Stewart, Charlie McDermott, Lyndsy Fonseca and Collette Wolfe. Directed by Steve Pink. [1:40]
SEX/NUDITY 8 - A man is shown thrusting into a woman while she is on her hands and knees (we see his bare back and buttocks); they are interrupted by three other men, who come into the room, and when the men leave, the man continues thrusting with the woman's legs next to his head, while giving a verbal accounting (using graphic sexual references) of what's happening so the other men (now standing outside) can hear.
► We see a man seated in a hot tub (his bare back and chest are visible), and a woman (her bare breasts are visible) sits on top of him thrusting rhythmically and moaning; she then stops and moves away from him.
► A woman kisses a man, she removes her sweater and unfastens the pants of another man (we see his boxer shorts and bare knees) implying oral sex; one man removes his clothing (revealing bare chest and abdomen) and she says that she only has sex with two men at a time (they are interrupted before anything else happens).
► A man kneels in front of another man standing, with his pants around his ankles, while other people stand around chanting "Suck, suck"; when the kneeling man moves toward the other man's genitals with his mouth open, the standing man collapses on top of him.
► Four men sit in a hot tub (three are fully nude and we see their bare backs, chests and buttocks and the other is bare-chested and wearing boxer shorts), they drink heavily, and throughout the evening, we see women with bare breasts in the hot tub with them, as well as a person dressed in a bear costume. We see many paintings, photographs and drawings of people gathered around and seated in hot tubs with bare-chested men and bare breasted women (one painting shows two bare breasted women, with one woman pinching the nipple of the other woman).
► A man in a room with another man and a woman talks about his erection and that the other man should try to make his the same; one man reaches over to touch the other man's genitals, he recoils, falls on the floor and runs out of the room.
► A man enters a hotel room, a woman wearing a short robe that hangs open (she's in a bra and panties and we see her bare abdomen, cleavage and legs) climbs on a bed, he sits next to her, they talk, she moves to kiss him and he gets up and leaves the room.
► We see posters featuring scantily clad women (bare buttocks, legs, cleavage and abdomens are seen) and a man kisses the bare buttocks in one of them. A woman wears a low-cut dress that reveals cleavage.
► Four men shove another man to the floor, hold him there and the man yells, "Are you raping?" A man talks about a sexual relationship he had with a woman when he was younger. A man makes a sexual gesture with his hands. A woman makes a sexual gesture with her hand and mouth. A woman talks about wanting to have sex with a man. A man describes how he'd take a medication by grinding it up and inserting it in his anus. A man makes a disparaging sexual remark about his mother and her boyfriend. A man calls a 9-year-old girl on the phone and yells at her, using graphic sexual descriptions, for cheating on him in the future, when they're adults and married.
► A woman jumps on a man, wraps her legs around his waist and they kiss and make arrangements to meet in her hotel room. Husbands and wives kiss in a few scenes. A man and a woman lie in the snow together and talk. We see a photo of two men hugging romantically.
VIOLENCE/GORE 5 - A man is struck by a car (he's OK), and then by a truck that rips his arm off (we see blood spurting as he picks up the bloody appendage); a man who's watching vomits on another man (we see goo).
► A man punches another man in the face (we see a bloody nose), the aggressor walks away, the injured man makes a remark that brings the man back and he is punched several more times (we don't see the punches but we do see his bruised and bloody face later). A man punches another man hard in the face, he falls to the ground (we see blood on his nose), and we later see his blood- stained shoe and sock and his badly bruised and bloody face. A man punches another man in the face and again in the head (he falls back and we see blood on his face); the injured man charges into the other man, tackles him and punches him repeatedly (we see blood on his face).
► We hear that a woman stabbed a man in the eye with a plastic fork (we see a flashback to this event a couple of times and we see one instance where the woman stabs the man in the eye with a cocktail pick, resulting in a lot of blood on his eyebrow).
► A man speeds his car into his garage, knocking down several boxes, closes the garage door, revs the engine creating toxic fumes and we see him in a hospital bed later (he recovers).
► A man slips and falls down a roof, three other men grab onto each other to pull him up, they all slip, and another man pulls them all up to safety. Four men shove another man to the floor and hold him there and the man yells, "Are you raping?"
► A man removes his catheter by pulling hard on the tube (we see the tube coming out slowly and the man groans); the tube lets loose and squirts the man and another man standing next to him with urine (one man licks the liquid off his face). A man projectile vomits on a squirrel, throwing it back through the air (we see the goo spray and more on the man's mouth). A man in a pet care facility puts on a rubber glove, lifts a dog's tail, looks at the dog's backside, apparently reaches into its anus and retrieves a set of car keys, which he throws to another man, who catches them and we see his hand and the keys covered in fecal matter (the man gags). We see a squirrel that has dried vomit on its fur, a couple of times. We see a dead raccoon floating in a hot tub and four men react to the sight and the smell. A man has what looks like ejaculate on his face and another man panics when he sees it and when the man licks some of it off (it turns out to be hand soap). A man urinates and we hear the trickle first in the toilet and then on the floor when he turns.
► A man throws a whirring chain saw into the air and catches it, throws it again and slips, falls to the ground and the saw lands next to him; his shirt is pinned under the blade but he is not harmed. A man's arm is caught in an elevator, the elevator goes up and down pulling his arm, and the doors eventually open and the man is unharmed.
► A man on a snowboard crashes into a pole (we hear a thud). A man on skis crashes into other skiers, they fall down, he tumbles over a ledge with two others, they crash into trees and eventually onto the ground (they are uninjured). A man skis over a picnic table where people are eating.
► During a time travel sequence, men swirl around in a hot tub and are shot into the air with a column of water, while lightning flashes in the sky.
► A man calls a 9-year-old girl on the phone and yells at her, using graphic sexual descriptions, for cheating on him in the future, when they're adults and married. Men yell at each other in many scenes. A man yells at his dog and another man tells him not to yell like that.
► A man says that if he were going to commit suicide, he'd do so by taking a shotgun to his genitals. A man makes disparaging remarks about another man trying to commit suicide. A man says, "He bit me" when talking about another man. A man talks about his father dying from E-coli poisoning. Men make reference to something that happened when they visited another city and that evidence was in a shoebox, and another man asks, "Is it a fetus?" We hear that a man's girlfriend moves out of the house they share and she leaves him a disparaging phone message about what she left behind. Two men describe another man as a divorced alcoholic with erectile dysfunction and other physical abnormalities. A man asks a woman "What color is Michael Jackson?" and he screams when she replies that he's "black." We hear a description of how two animals mate and that it involves one spraying the other with a secretion. A man says, "I'm gonna throw up," but does not.
► A man puts a handgun on a pile of money as a threat.
LANGUAGE 10 - About 191 F-words and its derivatives, 2 obscene hand gestures, 33 sexual terms, 2 sexual gestures, 50 scatological terms, 41 anatomical terms, 20 mild obscenities, 3 derogatory terms for homosexuals, 1 derogatory terms for women, name-calling (stupid, delusional, narcissistic, violator, devil, dork, Lucifer, scamp, toxic, perv, Russkies, loser), 6 religious profanities, 14 religious exclamations.
SUBSTANCE USE - People snort cocaine in several scenes (one time a man's nose, mouth and chin are covered in white powder) and people smoke marijuana and snort cocaine. A man drinks from a bottle of alcohol while driving a car, men drink alcohol from bottles in numerous other scenes, people drink alcohol at a concert, people drink a lot of alcohol while sitting in a hot tub, people drink beer while playing a drinking game, and a man and a woman drink wine together. A man smokes a cigarette in a few scenes, a woman lights a cigar and puts it out after a puff, and a woman buys a pack of cigarettes from a machine. A man asks another man if he had Ritalin and he says he had another prescription medication, and a man describes how he'd take a medication by grinding it up and inserting it in his anus.
DISCUSSION TOPICS - Life choices, second chances, friendship, relationships, love, disappointment, time travel, attempted suicide, the "butterfly effect," chaos, guilt, death of a family member, aging, the 1980s, second chances, heroism.
MESSAGE - There's no escaping the inevitable. Embrace the chaos of life.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.
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