Hot Tub Time Machine

It’s a time-honoured tradition among ageing rock stars with dwindling audiences to go back to the time that made them famous: nostalgia sells. Now John Cusack is applying the same shtick to movies: having tried his luck as both action hero and romantic lead, with Hot Tub Time Machine, Cusack returns to the slapdash, high-concept ’80s comedies that made him famous.

And concepts don’t come much higher than this: following a mysterious incident with an outdoor jacuzzi and a can of nuclear-powered Russian energy drink, Adam (Cusack) and his three friends find themselves rocketed into the past, forced to relive the craziest night of their teenage lives before they can find a way back to the good old 21st century.

Hot Tub Time Machine conforms a little too closely to the post-Hangover comedy template: drunk middle-aged losers with loud voices, bad attitudes and dubious ideas about women. But where this film scores over The Hangover is in the script, which replaces brash over-confidence with a looser narrative structure and a shaggier, more playful sense of humour.

It also does a great job of re-creating the style and content of the ’80s comedies it so lovingly pastiches, namely girls with big hair, pounding synth music and skisuit-wearing preppy douchebag villains. Giving his most charming performance in years, Cusack keeps the film sweet-natured when his more outrageous co-star Rob Corddry threatens to go overboard. No masterpiece, perhaps, but Hot Tub Time Machine is post-pub perfection. Tom Huddleston