There, trapped in the era of Miami Vice, Reagan, Jheri curl and Poison, the three friends are seen by everyone else as their teenage selves. They must not do anything that could screw-up the space-time continuum and thus change the future, and so are forced to relive the same traumatic events they went through in 1986. Along the way, though, they begin to realize how much better their lives would be in the present if they did alter the course of history. Do they dare?
Despite having so many strikes against it, Hot Tub Time Machine ended up being an entertaining albeit deeply flawed comedy. It really shouldn't work as well as it does: movies that poke fun at the '80s seemed to have gone out of vogue a few years back, and it's also a shameless ripoff, sorry, homage to Back to the Future, the king of time-travel comedies and one of the best genre films of the 1980s. In fact, every major beat from that film is mirrored here, and Hot Tub openly acknowledges its debt to BTTF by casting Crispin Glover in the role of an ornery, one-armed bellhop (he's the film's most effective running gag).
Hot Tub recycles many of the same (now) time-travel movie tropes started by BTTF and later used in other films in the genre. For example: Not hoping to screw up the space-time continuum and change history? Check. Running into old friends and enemies? Check. Finding out a loved one was a drunk and/or slut? Check. Making sure people who need to fall in love still do? Check. Preventing someone from not being erased from existence? Check. Poking fun at the styles, slang, music and entertainment of the era? Check. We even have a protagonist performing with a band to the astonishment of the crowd. All of these were clever 25 years ago when BTTF came out, but we're too aware of such beats now.
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