Hot Tub Time Machine: Exactly Like Back To The Future!

I've been analysing Hot Tub Time Machine since I saw it, and what has struck me as quite remarkable is its uncanny similarity to Back To The Future. Obviously a claim like that requires empirical evidence to back it up, so I've wheeled out The Incredible Suit's Comparotron 2000 to illustrate my point.

I think you'll agree that pretty much seals it.

In fact the only ways in which Hot Tub Time Machine differs from Back To The Future are in its all-encompassing absence of wit, charm and likeable characters, its reliance on poo and knob jokes and a continuous stream of swears in place of clever humour, its entirely predictable and lazy plotting, its casting of a kooky Zooey Deschanel-alike who I think I was actually supposed to think was Zooey Deschanel, its staggering failure to make us celebrate the return of Chevy Chase, its central message that to be happy and successful you need to be unspeakably wealthy and a complete asshole, the general impression that it was written by a plate of minced beef and the fact that it's not even as good as you'd expect a film called Hot Tub Time Machine to be.

Other than that, it's practically a shot-for-shot remake.

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A Big Pair Of Funbags With Cherries On Top

Well if there’s one thing that Movie Santa delved deep into his sack for over Christmas, it’s a sleighload of trailers for filmy delights we can look forward to, or look forward to ignoring, over 2010. Let’s have a look at some of them together, shall we?

Clash Of The Titans

Everything inside me tells me this is going to be so awful that I’d rather have carnal relations with Medusa, but this trailer’s quite good isn’t it? I can’t be doing with all that rock music, and I think they’ve blown it by showing the Kraken, but this looks like silly fabness on toast to me.

Iron Man 2

I can take or leave the first one, but Iron Man 2, or Iron 2 Man as it appears to be called at the end of the trailer, looks like it might be taking things a bit more seriously. Let’s hope it’s more Spider-Man 2 than The Dark Knight, eh? Oooh, controversial.

Robin Hood

It’s Gladiator 2, set in the East Midlands! Groovy. I can’t bear Russell Crowe and Ridley Scott doesn’t do it for me any more, but I’ll go and see this because you have to go and see a new Ridders film, it’s the law. Rubbish trailer though.

Alice In Wonderland

New Tim Burton films must also be seen by law despite their decreasing quality levels, although this one actually looks quite spectacular. In a hallucinogenic acid trip kind of way. I imagine.

Knight & Day

Cruise and Diaz are slowly edging away from ‘must-see’ to ‘barely tolerable’, but this looks like a big pair of funbags with cherries on top. And no, I’m not referring to Cameron Diaz’s hooters.

Cop Out

I don’t know what in the name of John McClane is going on here. Bruce Willis appears to have regressed to Hudson Hawk levels of comedy, and that other guy, who seems to be called Tracy, is about as funny as medieval methods of haemorrhoid removal. Has Kevin Smith made a good film since Clerks? No.

Hot Tub Time Machine

John Cusack! Time travel! The 1980s! Chevy Chase! What’s not to love? Nothing, that’s what. Best film of 2010. That’s a cast-iron The Incredible Suit guarantee.

Inception

OK, so obviously this is clearly going to be the best film of 2010. I never said the Hot Tub Time Machine guarantee was cast iron, did I? I did? Oh. Well forget it. Inception is going to be a mind-blowing cake with brain-frazzling icing and hundreds and thousands made of tiny shards of holy crap that's amazingness. That’s a cast-iron The Incredible Suit guarantee.

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Silence, Pipsqueak!

The Earth stopped rotating for a brief moment earlier today when this newsparp was uncorked: there’s going to be a new National Lampoon’s Vacation movie.

Remember the National Lampoon’s Vacation movies? Not very good were they? There were about four of them and some more that were made for TV (that’s how good they were), and were a showcase for the great Chevy Chase to hide his comedy talent behind a big wall made of humourless bricks, held together with papier mache made from old Christmas cracker jokes and Russ Abbot's saliva.

The hilarity-free premise is that the new films will centre on Chase’s character’s son Rusty Griswold, and Empire reports that “there will reportedly be "room" for Chase and his screen wife Beverly D'Angelo to appear as the Griswold grandparents.” I’m not sure why the word ‘room’ is in quotes; perhaps it’s a get-out clause whereby they can later say “when we said ‘room’, we obviously meant ‘absolutely no chance in Hell.’”

So how does a non-idea like this come about? Well, you may be surprised to hear that The Incredible Suit has eyes and ears all over the movie industry, and I can exclusively bring you the transcript of the very meeting in which this winnit of an idea was untangled from the bum hairs of Hollywood:

An impoverished screenwriter enters the office of a studio bignob, and is forced to spend the duration of the meeting on his knees. He is forbidden from looking the bignob in the eye (if you’ll forgive the expression).

Screenwriter: “Please sir, I’ve cobbled together a script for a comedy. It’s a bit like those National Lampoon’s Vacation films, only not as good. In fact it’s rubbish.”

Bignob: “Silence, pipsqueak! Leave it to me, we’ll slap the National Lampoon name on it, offer Chevy Chase a one-scene cameo – he’ll take anything these days – and people will flock to see it like idiot sheep attending an idiot sheep convention!”

Screenwriter: “Oh, sir, what a splendid idea! It’ll make a fortune and I can finally buy some shoes!”

Bignob: “Silence, pipsqueak! I’ll be the one trousering the cash, thankyou! Now bugger off back to your one-room bedsit with the bucket-toilet. Your rats must need feeding.”

And with that the screenwriter shuffles backwards on his knees out of the office, keeping his head bowed. As he is ejected onto the street by a burly security guard, a single tear falls from his filthy face onto his bare foot. It’s the only wash he can afford.

So, when the new National Lampoon’s Vacation movie comes out, do make sure you go and see it, for your hard-earned cash will keep the wheels of Hollywood greased and turning so that more films of this quality can be made. Hooray!

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