Oh, and Adam needs medical care, which winds up being at the “St. (Christian Slater plays the host, in the kind of cameo that makes you wonder if his next gig will involve cutting a ribbon at a Kia dealership in Paramus.) Nick is tricked into simulating gay sex with Lou and Adam Jr. Randomly, everyone winds up in a noxious scene at a virtual-reality talk show. Craig Robinson in “Hot Tub Time Machine 2.” Paramount Pictures/MGM Adam Jr., who is about to get married, instead goes on a wacky acid trip, and a robot car decides it wants to kill Lou. The smart plotting of the first film is completely gone this time the script barely bothers with the central mystery, preferring to lurch from one unfunny set piece to another. (Chevy Chase, who had a funny cameo in the first one, stops by for 30 painful seconds of exposition as the mysterious handyman who explains the time gizmo.) The Cusack-size space is occupied by Adam Scott, as Adam Jr., the son of the Cusack character, who meets the other three pals in 2025, where they have jumped to try to figure out who shot Lou in 2015. Within five minutes you’ll guess why John Cusack, not overly encumbered with big film roles these days, didn’t return for the sequel: The script is monotonous, meandering and witless, frantically ramming together middle-school non-ideas such as a guy being forced to rape another guy on a reality show, or a guy’s testicles projectile-exploding into the faces of two other guys, or a guy being shot in both the head and the man-parts. Formerly lovable scamps, the guys now seem like undeserving cheaters. Their friend Nick (Craig Robinson) got rich by ripping off songs that hadn’t been written yet (everything from Nirvana to Lisa Loeb). Now, Lou is a billionaire jerk, his son Jacob (Clark Duke) a resentful jerk. The film ended in bliss, with previously suicidal Lou (Rob Corddry) jumping back in time to realize his dreams by joining Mötley Crüe (now Mötley Lou) and getting rich by founding Google (or Lougle). The 2010 original was hilarious, with a solid character foundation in the yearning of average middle-aged guys for wiser decisions in youth. My thoughts were less “Back to the Future” than “Back to the drawing board.” “Hot Tub Time Machine 2” isn’t a time-travel movie so much as a time-murder movie, with a hairline-thin plot bulked up with fillers involving puke, penile damage and gay panic. Rated R (profanity, nudity, crude and sexual humor, drug abuse).
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