Four losers decide to take a break from their daily lives, after one of them attempts to kill himself, to go relax at their favorite teenage hang out in Kodiak Valley (ski resort). Finding the place in ruins their lives begin to spiral a bit more, so they do the best they can and drink their troubles away. Their savior is a hot tub, the only thing that makes them happy. After a night binge drinking, they wake up and notice some strange things; the worst is that they’re back in 1986. So the boys need to figure out if what they are experiencing/seeing is real and if they should tamper with the space/time continuum (which means they could possibly rectify their mistakes). Regardless, they need to do whatever to get back home.
The movie is absurd. Anyone going into it thinking it’s going to be an intelligent comedy about some complicated time machine is going to come away extremely disappointed. That’s the point of the movie though, DO NOT TAKE IT SERIOUSLY. The film is outrageous by the premise alone and is helped along with a very strong cast of funny folk.
Led by John Cusack, the film stars other greats as Craig Robinson (from The Office), outrageously funny Rob Corddry, up and coming Clark Duke and classic comedy legend Chevy Chase. Each plays their stereotypical roles perfectly. Cusack is the man in a rut after his girlfriend breaks up with him. Robinson is the man unhappy with his life, which is completely led by his wife (he even adopted his wife’s last name). Corddry is the loner that has no direction, unless you can’t self-destruction as direction. Clark Duke plays the innocent nerd that hasn’t experienced life. Chevy Chase is a very mysterious repairman. Each actor plays their part perfectly and brings the comedy with full force.
With that said, the movie has some major holes in it (not those types of holes, you pervs!). How the hot tub came to be a time machine isn’t fully explained. Kodiak Valley wasn’t fully explained and what happened to it. There was just an enormous amount of disconnection between plot points. The only thing explained that was explained was how Crispin Glover’s character lost his arm (that was hilarious, too. Not the actual arm loss, but the anticipation).
With all of this said, this is a comedy that doesn’t need explanation; rather it only needs moments. It provides many grotesque moments and many just laughing until your gut hurts moments. You will enjoy this movie if you don’t take it too seriously.
Moving on to the beef of the Blu-ray….
The Blu-ray visuals are actually quite good. I wouldn’t rate it beyond good as you do get some graininess in some scenes, but it’s certainly above and beyond DVD quality. The real steal with the Blu-ray is the kickass soundtrack that comes with the movie. Remastered in DTS-HD you get some great audio that will sound pretty hardcore coming through your 5.1+ speakers.
You will be singing the final song in the credits days after viewing the film.
As for the special features, not really much to crow about. On the back of the box it lists a ton of features, but the longest one is 11 minutes (deleted scenes). The other features are small tv promotional snippets of the film. Each one lasts around 1-2 minutes in length. If you’re looking for long featurettes then you’re going to be out of luck here. The biggest thing you get is two versions of the film on one Blu-ray disc. You can go with the raunchy ‘unrated’ edition (which is what it says it is) or the original theatrical edition.
Other than that I would have to say that the featurettes were a bit of a let down. I would have liked to see something on Chevy Chase or just a standard ‘making of’ with the cast and crew. Heck, I would have loved to hear commentary from the cast and crew; alas you get nothing.