The Philosophical Implications of Hot Tub Time Machine 2

The universe is an incessantly cruel place, devoid of answers and offering only cold, relentless silence as a retort to our most daunting questions. What is the meaning of life? Is there a God? What is the secret to happiness?

Who the fuck is the black guy in Hot Tub Time Machine 2 and what kind of monster were these pills designed for?

I took two of these little, round, off-white tablets wrapped in a cellophane cigarette-pack wrapper I got from a rather unscrupulous female friend that pulled them out from between her breasts about half an hour ago. She described them as having been purchased from a man with a severe case of bipolar disorder, or maybe schizophrenia. Apparently the doctors aren't quite sure what exactly is wrong with the guy. I wanted to ask why on Earth she was associating with someone who would likely be lobotomized if this was the 1950s. Then again, she's associating with me, and my Saturday agenda is to get strung out on anti-psychotics and review Hot Tub Time Machine 2, so who am I to judge?

Rob Corddry just got his dick shot off. I currently feel as if I'm wearing a suit exquisitely tailored out of my own skin. I didn't find that funny, that's not funny at all. That's his dick, man. Anonymous black guy whose been in every comedy of the past 10 years and kid who looks like a blend of the little fat kid from 2 and a Half Men and Andy Milonakis bring him to the hot tub, where they proceed to get utterly smacked on booze, bongs and drugs.

There's a 16-or-so-year-old kid sitting about two rows ahead of me in the theater with a young blonde girl leaning against his shoulder. I'm wondering, is this a date? Are they dating? Did this kid ask this girl out, go home, think for awhile, call his friends for advice and stand in a mirror styling his hair in all different fashions for hours? After all of this, did he finally think he found the answer, texting this girl and asking her if she wanted to go see a matinee of Hot Tub Time Machine 2 this Saturday? Is this what normal people do? Is the guy in the back of an empty movie theater scribbling into a notepad while his tongue slowly melts into the back of his throat really the person that should be making the decision of what's normal? Can he be trusted with that kind of authority?

Apparently, when they get a certain level of fucked up, the time machine just throws them somewhere in the past or future. The whole point, I think, was to get him back in time far enough to save his Johnson. Instead, they're sent to 2024. They look in a mirror and they have aged 10 years. I refuse to accept that this makes any fucking sense. In the first movie, the same shit happens, where they travel into the past and are actually just themselves at that time period with their 2014 brains. No matter how you spin that, their actual selves, as in the person living in that time period, must have a pretty fucked up life after they inevitably travel back to present day. Either there are a couple days of which they have no recollection or they're aware that their bodies were invaded by themselves from the past or future. In which case, how exactly does that help them become successful musicians or entrepreneurs, as Corddry and Craig Robinson, his name is Craig Robinson, are?

What I mean is, think about yourself. What you're capable of, what you could tell your past self if you were to travel back in time. More than likely, it's not much. You could probably let 16-year-old you know that you shouldn't date "X," or you should spend more time applying for scholarships. But could you tell them how to make the iPhone 6? There's this entire implied idea in the Hot Tub Time Machine franchise that being a time traveler heading to the past gives you some sort of advanced knowledge. But if you were to travel back to 1832, would you be able to tell them how to make the telephone? Or build a car?

Even more depressing is the fact they are looking at their future selves. There is no implication that this time machine travels to different tangential universes and gives them a glimpse at a possible future, but not an exact one. In fact, given that when they travel into the past they can only reach events which actually happened in the past, it can be assumed that the time machine travels along a linear timeline. That is, time is not malleable. It is a constant. The Americans will always win the Revolution, the Nazis will always lose, Rob Corddry will always lose his doogan. What is represented in Hot Tub Time Machine 2 is a nihilistic rendering of the nature of time. It is a cruel, uncaring bastard giving those it rules over a false sense of free will, fueled only by ignorance of the course. And those unfortunate souls given the curse of seeing the trail ahead are only offered a glimpse into the mouth of madness, as any action they take to circumvent this future is meaningless meandering into the depths of insanity.

I need to get out of this place.

I stumble up on my newborn-calf legs while the sound of the lips smacking between two normal people on a normal date becomes the only sound I can hear. As I pass their seats I realize they are not even kissing. They could be brother and sister for all I know. I don't know much.

What I do know, as I stagger through the popcorn-kernel-littered carpets toward the sun blaring like the gates of Heaven through the front entrance, is that if there is a God writing scripts for our existences, he published the story and abandoned us long ago.