Hot Tub Time Machine
- by Josh Heald, Sean Anders, and John Morris, directed by Steve Pink
- Feature Film
- Science Fiction, Comedy
- Adults
- Definite Time Travel
- English
- Hot Tub Time Machine by Josh Heald, Sean Anders, and John Morris, directed by Steve Pink (premiered at an unknown movie theater, Hollywood, CA, 17 March 2010).
Three middle-aged losers (along with a nephew) head back to their teenaged bodies at a ski resort twentysome years earlier.
—Michael Main
Yes, exactly. You step on a bug and the fucking Internet is never invented.
Tags
(22)
- Time Periods
- Circa AD 1970 to 1999: winter of 1986
- Circa AD 2000 to 2099: 2010 starting date
- Timeline Models
- Creation of One New Timeline: Overall, they create one new timeline, which Nick, Adam, and Jake return to.
- In a Changed Timeline, You Don’t Remember Your Changed Life: Nick, Adam, and Jake return to completely different lives in a new 2010 timeline, but the new-timeline Nick, Adam, and Jake—who built those lives!—are nowhere to be seen.
- Leaky Timelines: When Lou and Kelly are interrupted in bed, a new Jake-less timeline is created. Leakage from that timeline causes Jake to flicker out of existence until a climactic moment extinguishes the threat.
- Remembering Other Timelines: All four of the travelers remember only the original timeline through 2010.
- Time Travel Methods
- Time Tubs: So you’re a time lord, and a jacuzzi is your spaceship.
- Themes
- Anachronistic Music, Dance, and Other Creations: [font=georgia, "high tower text", serif]To begin with, there was Nick’s rendition of ♫ Let’s get it started . . . in heeeeere ♫ —Black Eyed Peas[/font]
- Butterfly Effect: Offhand comment: You step on a bug and the fucking Internet is never invented.
- Caution! Do Not Destroy Spacetime Continuum!: We see ourselves, and we blow up or explode or some shit. Didn’t y’all see Time Cop?
- Free Will, Fate, and Determinism: So you’re saying that your whole entire life is predetermined stuff no matter what you do?
- Get Rich Quick through Time Travel: Initially, this is just Lou making bets. But after more significant events, Lougle asks: Was it morally wrong for me to exploit my knowledge of the future for financial gain?
- Guardians of Time: The hot tub repairman is a distant relative of various guardians of time.
- Identity Illusion: When the four travelers look at each other, they see their 2010 selves, but everyone else sees their younger bodies.
- Never Change the Past!: The dangers of changing the past drives much of the plot: The whole system can go haywire if you change one little thing.
- Stuck in Time: We stuck in the fuckin’ ’80s. How I supposed to get a job?
- Travels into Yourself: Why are we in our young bodies?
- Real-World Tags
- The Drive: Lou says to Nick, “This is the fuckin’ Drive, man.”
- John Elway: Elway is shown on the TV throwing a long pass.
- Ronald Reagan: Briefly on TV.
- Fictional Tags
- Alf: Briefly on TV.
- Groupings
Variants
(1)
- Hot Tub Time Machine by Josh Heald, Sean Anders, and John Morris, directed by Steve Pink (premiered at an unknown movie theater, Hollywood, CA, 17 March 2010).
Josh Heald (story)
Indexer Notes
(1)
- “The Drive”— But it’s impossible to say how much the filmmakers got wrong about The Drive. For starters, the game was played in January of 1987, not ’86. And the pass that knotted things up was a short pass to Mark Jackson, not a long pass to Winder. But who knows? Maybe that rogue squirrel who made its way from the Rockies to Cleveland managed to change the game in more than one way.