YMMV / Hot Tub Time Machine

Hot Tub Time Machine:

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Jacob is running to find his companions. Suddenly he is dancing with a girl and asking if he can text her. The girl is never seen or mentioned again. However, she does show up in a deleted scene, in which she asks Jacob about his snowboard.
• Crosses the Line Twice: A screaming, obscene phone call to a nine-year-old girl becomes a character's Moment of Awesome.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Adam's quote: "One little change has a ripple effect and it affects everything else. Like a butterfly floats its wings and Tokyo explodes or there's a tsunami, in like, you know, somewhere". (The earthquake and tsunami that destroyed the Fukushima nuclear plant was the year after this film came out.)
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Blaine is a boorish Eagleland Jerk Jock who is always freaking out about how the protagonists are secret Russian spies in their midst. Fast forward to Captain America: The Winter Soldier, where that's exactly what he is (or so it seems). And yes, you did just see that guy from The Daily Show beat the ever-loving shit out of the Winter Soldier. This is only made even more hilairious when Avengers: Endgame has the characters outright mention this film by name when discussing their concept of Time Travel.
  • In the scene parodying the Denver Broncos' game-winning drive in an AFC Championship game, Mark Jackson drops a pass due to a squirrel distracting him. In the 2011 National League Division series between the Philidelphia Phillies and the St. Louis Cardinals, play was temporarily halted because a squirrel ran onto the field. Cardinals fans gave it the nickname "Rally Squirrel" as their team went on to win the World Series that year.
  • Lou being a fan of Motley Crue and having an enemy played by Sebastian Stan is ironic given the latter would go on to play Tommy Lee.
• One-Scene Wonder: Chevy Chase as the mysterious jacuzzi repairman. Appears four or five times throughout the movie, but never for more than a couple minutes before disappearing as suddenly as he came, and is easily one of the best parts.
• Retroactive Recognition: Jerkass ski patrol leader Blaine is Sebastian Stan, AKA Bucky Barnes.
• Spiritual Adaptation: In his review of the film, Bob Chipman called it a better remake of Back to the Future than any actual remake of Back to the Future could possibly be.
• Spiritual Successor: From the Time Travel, to the "Mister Sandman" Sequence, to standing up to the bully and his toadies, to the A Little Something We Call Hip-Hop scene, to the search for the Applied Phlebotinum in order to get back, to the minor part played by Crispin Glover, this is Back to the Future for a new generation... or more like the same generation, but inverted.

Hot Tub Time Machine 2:

• Just Here for Godzilla: Many people go to this film merely for the group's time-traveling adventures at the end.
• Sequelitis: Compare the original film's modest 63% from critics and 56% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes to the sequel's pathetic 14% from critics and 26% from audiences.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The post-credit skits of the gang travelling through different periods of time could have made for a more interesting movie in its own right.

---