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‘Hot Tub Time Machine 2’ is vastly inferior to its predecessor (D)

Who knows what the world will look like in 2025? The goofballs from the smart-dumb 2010 guy comedy Hot Tub Time Machine are accidentally given an advance peek in the frenzied, chaotic sequel. As could have been predicted, Hot Tub Time Machine 2 is vastly inferior to the first Hot Tub, but it's not stupid so much as desperately frantic.

The original film’s flurry of joking pop-cultural references has become a white-out blizzard of allusions. Both movies are directed by Steve Pink, whose strategy is to keep the momentum so breathless that the story outpaces the mental agility of an audience with a presumed attention span of zero.

In the years since their trip back to 1986 — during which they encountered their younger selves, along with ex-girlfriends — Lou Dorchen (Rob Corddry), once a depressed loser, has used his foreknowledge of the future to become the chief honcho of the tech giant Lougle (think Google, relocated to New Orleans), and is nicknamed “the father of the Internet.” His best buddy and fellow time traveler Nick Webber (Craig Robinson) has also done well, forging a music career by stealing songs like Lisa Loeb’s “Stay (I Missed You)” and making them hits for himself.

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Lou, now a bewigged, superannuated party animal, is shot in the groin. Desperate to recover his manhood, he jumps into the same magical hot tub to take him back far enough in time to anticipate the incident. Instead, he is blasted forward 10 years.

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Both Hot Tub movies have the genre's requisite nods to homophobia with scenes in which Lou and Nick are forced to have sex with each other in front of an audience. Because these and other acts take place in the future, the screenplay (by Josh Heald) suggests they didn't really happen. And if they did, it might have been in an alternative universe.

Whether something did or didn’t happen, and the comic confusion as the future bumps into the past: those are the smart parts of a movie that is not as idiotic as it pretends to be.

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By STEPHEN HOLDEN/The New York Times

HOT TUB TIME MACHINE 2 (D)

Directed by Steve Pink. R (crude sexual content and language throughout, graphic nudity, drug use and some violence). 93 mins. In wide release.