Rub-a-dub-dub, 3 men in a dud

Directed by Steve Pink. Starring John Cusack, Clark Duke, Craig Robinson, Rob Corddry, Crispin Glover, Lizzy Caplan 16 cert, gen release, 99 min

Hot Tub Time Machineis a high-concept comedy well past its sell-by date, writes DONALD CLARKE

WHEN YOU make a film like Hot Tub Time Machine, you should beware of giving in to hubris. Yet, within the opening half of this useless comedy, the script allows its characters to make reference to both Wild Hogs(that thing with Travolta and the motorbikes) and The Butterfly Effect(that thing with Aston Kutcher and the time travel). There is an undeniable sense that those movies are being ridiculed. But what is Hot Tub Time Machinebut an uncomfortable blend of Wild Hogsand The Butterfly Effect?

John Cusack plays one of several estranged pals whose lives have gone to pot after promising beginnings in the 1980s. One runs a parlour for pampered doggies. Another has just tried to commit suicide.

Grudgingly agreeing to join in a scheme to bolster the depressive’s mood, Cusack, accompanied by his slack nephew, drives the three caballeros to a lodge in the mountains. In 1986, the ski resort was a hot bed of Lycra and vice. Now, however, it has declined into clogged, dust-covered decrepitude. Why, if only there were some sort of possessed device – a hot tub perhaps – that could transport our team back in time.

The version of 1986 in which they end up is not one you will remember. This is Reagan's America as seen through the spew-covered lens of the Farrelly brothers or the American Pieteam.

It's a very odd-looking beast. The clothes, though heightened for comic effect, are certainly the sort you might see in a John Hughes picture. Cusack (who's lost weight again) looks impressively like the guy who starred in 1989's Say Anything. But the film itself – all bodily fluids and teen humping – is cut to rhythms devised in the late 1990s. Even The Butterfly Effectnever seemed quite so peculiarly messed up.

Hot Tub Time Machinealso suffers from a common malaise of the time-travel genre: none of the temporal tourists ever seem to get the message. Stop saying you'll "text" somebody. Stop talking about "e-mail" to puzzled passersby. The concept is really not that hard to grasp. Hot Tub Time Machine. Get it?