I know, it’s about to leave theatres, but surely there’s something we should say about the newest foray in the Predator franchise. Something like: a group of aliens have captured the finest human predators on earth and transported them an intergalactic hunting ground where they test them one by one in a gruelling game of cat and mouse. Swish.

Or, maybe something like, having exhausted all the banal directions this series could possibly take, the makers of this gem have barely concealed their own resignation to remaking the original, covering their plot with the thin veil of a new location…well, still a jungle…and new characters…although, the girl is a relative of the girl from the first one or something? Or, how about, you remember how in the first one when Arnold and Carl Weathers meet for the first time they shake hands and the camera cuts in on their biceps and you realize that the movie is going to be little more than an excuse for Schwarzenegger to shed the seven shirts he’s apparently hiding under his combat vest…well that one shot is better than this movie, which is as pointless as trying to fight your way off a hunting range in the middle of another galaxy, whether or not you found some of that magic mud that makes your body temperature unreadable to thermal sensors (and why hasn’t the US military clued in?). Or maybe we should just say, why on earth did someone think it would be cool to have an aging Lawrence Fishburne rock up in a predator maks and whisper a nursery rhyme? Bah. (and by the way, the first Predator rocks.)

-plf.

I really wanted to hate this film. The premise is simple enough, three grown men, disillusioned with their romantic and professional lives, take a vacation to the last place they felt like their lives had promise and meaning. If you haven’t clued in yet, the hot tub in their room is a time machine and, after passing out in it drunk, they wake up in 1986, and what would be the banner year in their lives. In some ways the sentiment is nice, who wouldn’t want to go back and fix things they regret. Yet, Hot Tub is more concerned with paying homage to the 80s light-sex romp, à la Ski School, than it is with any quasi-metaphysical exploration of the meaning of adulthood. But, should you see it? Well…

The downside of Hot Tub is that it upholds all the values of that which it honours, all the ugly stuff that made the cinema of the 80s the blunt force trauma in the conservative attack on social progress. Hot Tub isn’t subtle, and it beats you over the head, proposing that happiness is found in fights, homophobia, sexual conquests, and the unabashed appropriation of material wealth.

But, if you want to hate Hot Tub, the kicker is that it’s funny, sometimes laugh out loud funny. When it stops being gross and reactionary, the film forgets itself and transforms into a clever of 80s comedies, and of the 80s itself. Watch out for the patriotic ski patroller who, after watching Red Dawn too many times, is bursting at the seams to ferret out and fend off a communist invasion. He is, without a doubt, the perfect reincarnation of every 80s high school tough guy.

Yet, if there is one reason to see this film, it’s Chevy Chase. His performance is so well-delivered, and so well-written, that by the end of the film I was half-convinced of the need for an Oscar for Best Cameo. And best of all, it’s not the belligerent Chevy of Fletch, but some new weird Chevy who’s gotten old and just isn’t all there…way to go!

- plf.