RANDOM THOUGHTS ABOUT HAIR METAL IN HOT TUB TIME MACHINE

About a month ago, Antonin Skullia, Esq. and myself got to attend an advance screening of Hot Tub Time Machine. If you don’t know what Hot Tub Time Machine is about, congratulations, you’re retarded. It’s right there in the title, shit for brains.

Anyway, Antonin and I were pretty sure going int that the movie was gonna suck, ’cause a) we were by far the oldest people at the screening and we’re not that old, and b) the movie is called Hot Tub Time Machine. But it was actually really funny, and I’ve been meaning to write about all its various hair metal references since we saw it. But I kept forgetting until I read this article on Metal Insider about this article on Collider, which proves that the dudes from Collider are either babies or were never cool enough to know about Poison. (‘Cause knowing about Poison is cool… right?) So I’ll write about it now.

My ramblings after the jump. There are some minor spoilers, so if you’re really concerned with the plot intricacies of a movie called Hot Tub Time Machine, don’t read this and instead go the bathroom and see how far you can shove your own fist up your ass.

• The year the flick’s four protagonists are zapped back to is 1986. In one scene, John Cusack’s character makes reference to “Sweet Child O’Mine.” At that point, I leaned over to Antonin and whispered “That song wasn’t released until 1987.” To which Antonin whispered back: “I’m pretty sure you’re the only person in this theater who will know that.” Antonin later lawyered the shit outta the movie, arguing that since Cusack’s character is from the future, he would already know the song, even if it was still a year away in 1986. Which is a very good explanation that I’m fairly certain the filmmakers didn’t actually have in mind when they made the movie.
• Rob Corddry’s character, “Lou,” is a major Motley Crue fan. There’s a plot point near the end of the movie that assumes that the Crue’s “Home Sweet Home” wasn’t already a massive hit in 1986, when it was, in fact, released in 1985. I understand that making such a nitpick about a movie called Hot Tub Time Machine is about as useful and telling Zakk Wylde that he uses too many guitar squeals in his music, but, hey, this is MetalSucks. We tend to over-think shit.
• John Cusack’s love interest is played by Lizzy Caplan, who you may remember from Cloverfield, Mean Girls, or being very hot and getting very naked on HBO’s True Blood. In the movie, she plays a journalist who is on tour with Poison, writing a story for Rolling Stone. Even though Poison’s logo and music gets used in the movie, they’re only seen from afar, played by look-alikes who actually do their stage schtick pretty well. I assume this is either because no one wanted to pay the dudes from Poison to show up despite having to pay them for use of their logo and music, or because the filmmakers didn’t believe that any audience would buy that Poison looked the same in 1986 as they do in 2010. (The movie has an explanation for why Cusack and company all look the same in the past, but its threadbare logic wouldn’t apply to anyone who didn’t travel through the titular apparatus.) In any case, it’s hard to believe that Poison would have a chick this hot on their tour bus in 1986 and not gang rape her.

ANYWAY, it’s a very funny movie, even if the story is about as logical and deep as you’d expect from something called Hot Tub Time Machine. Corddry and Craig Robinson, especially, are some funny motherfuckers. Check it out this weekend, if you have nothing better to do.

Here’s the red band trailer, which is to say, don’t watch this at work/the library/in front of your mom:

-AR