and a flux capacitor

There is a movie out there that looks and is supposed to be really bad.  Something called “Hot Tub Time Machine”, which is high concept in the manner that the title says the premise.  I wouldn’t mention it in relation to anything, and would allow it to slip out of view with nary a thought– Ebert gives it his thumb up, if that matters — except that it apparently plays some inevitable homage to Back to the Future. 

Marty McFly plays “Johnny B Goode” in 1955.  These guys play The Black Eyed Peas’s “Let’s Get It Started” in 1986.  Someone will have to clue me in if the cousin of “Will I Am” (quick wikipedia search shows his name is William James Adams, Jr) calls up his cousin saying something about “New Sound you’re looking for.”

Which would get too close to the Simpsons Nirvana parody.  (and so goes the phrase: etc.)

… Then again, I always liked South Parks’s “Wacky World of 1996” from 1999, as a parody of the tendency to cram these ahistorical references for use of a punchline.  Yes, watching the trailer for “Hot Tub Time Machine”, I see the teenager in that act with a girl in 1986.

Worth mentioning that if Back to the Future were made today, Marty McFly would be travelling back to the year 1980.  Now recreate the movie in your head from that reshuffled time sequences.  You’re getting a little loopy there, aren’t you?

Leave a Reply