So unrealistic. No group of white dudes would actually have a black friend as cool as this guy.

[Warning: spoilers for Hot Tub Time Machine below]

I recently saw Hot Tub Time Machine, and it got me thinking about this idea of “wish-fulfillment” fantasies in movies. See, Hot Tub Time Machine is way more than the raunchy sex comedy its trailer would lead you to believe. It’s actually a surprisingly subtle and complicated deconstruction of the very idea of wish-fulfillment in movies. Heavy stuff, right? It’s a lot to Overthink; but first, let’s take a little refresher on the idea of wish-fulfillment in movies.

So unrealistic. There are no chicks this hot who live in Pittsburgh.

Most of the time, we pop culture snobs think that wish-fulfillment plots are a “bad thing” because in movies like She’s Out Of My League, they’re used as a writer’s lazy way of inserting himself into the movie as a nerdy guy who gets the impossibly perfect (and poorly developed) “Mary Sue” hot blonde character while discovering his unknown abilities.

Lame, right? We’ve seen it a million times, and although part of me likes to live vicariously through these male fantasies on the screen, part of me also feels pandered to and cheaply manipulated by these kinds of movies. It makes me upset that movie studios feel like they can easily take my money by churning out these improbable stories that prey on my feelings of inadequacy as a man.

Bad wish-fulfillment! Bad narrative structure! Bad, bad!

So unrealistic. Rats smart enough to cook can only be found in the NYC subways, not Paris.

Except, not all the time. Think about Ratatouille: it’s wish fulfillment through and through; it even shares a lot of the same plot elements of the slightly less critically acclaimed She’s Out Of My League. There’s the physically unattractive protagonist who’s wasting away at a low level job, the improbable plot devices that give him a big break (In case you forgot, the rat’s method of cooking involved pulling on a guy’s hair to control his limbs. Suspension of disbelief: consider it stretched.), and of course, the fulfillment of the highly improbable wish.

The difference between a She’s Out Of My League and a Ratatouille lies in the subtle implications of their respective acts of wish-fulfillment. When the schlumpy guy’s wish gets fulfilled in a lowbrow sex comedy, the audience gets the message that unrealistic male sexual fantasies and negative stereotypes in gender roles will win the day. When a lovable rat’s wish gets fulfilled in an uplifting Pixar movie, the audience gets the message that dedication to a dream and perseverance will win the day. The former is pandering; the latter is inspiring.

Now, back to the hot tub. Hot Tub Time Machine at first seems to be of the pandering type of wish-fulfillment movie. The protagonists are all men in their 40’s living unfulfilling lives. Through a series of improbable events, they returned to their youthful “glory days,” correct past mistakes, and remake their lives into sexier, wealthier, happier new versions.

This would be highly problematic if the movie were taking itself seriously, which, if you didn’t notice by the title, it definitely doesn’t do. Virtually every element of Hot Tub Time Machine toes the line between pandering wish-fulfillment movie and deconstruction of a pandering wish fulfillment movie. Let’s look at each of the main characters and their respective journeys towards wish-fulfillment:

• Craig Robinson as Nick Webber-Agnou: he was once an aspiring singer, but now he’s stuck in a humiliating pet massage job. We’ve seen the aspiring X stuck in Y job setup so many times before that we’re primed to believe pretty much anything, but then Robinson reaches into a dog’s butt and pulls out a car key. It’s mostly believable if you read this movie straight, but if you read it as a satire, it’s clear that this is meant to be an over-exaggeration of the “crappy job” setup.
• Rob Corddry as Lou, aka “The Violator”: he’s an outrageous party animal, the very embodiment of the id. At first, his wish-fulfillment exercise seems to be recapturing the partying excess of the 80’s, but at the end, it’s revealed that that excess had turned him suicidal. His wish-fulfillment turns out to be escaping suicide. It’s revealed in almost a passing manner towards the end, and it’s immediately followed by the “happy ending,” so there’s not a lot of time for the audience to meditate on it. But looking back, it’s pretty freaking dark and totally out of place in a typical wish-fulfillment fantasy. It’s as if the filmmakers are reminding us that in real life, suicidal people often don’t get the help that friends on a time travel trip provide. In real life, these people just wind up killing themselves. Yikes.
• John Cusack as Adam: take a look at John Cusack’s filmography if you need a reminder as to why he’s in this movie. The man who built his career on 80’s wish-fulfillment teen movies now finds himself in his 40s, alone, and unfulfilled. And what does he do, now that he’s got the chance to redeem himself in a wish-fulfillment scenario? He gets stoned and passes out on the ground, where the romantic interest just so happens to be passing by to take him on a final journey of discovery. It’s exactly the type of weak, happenstance-driven plot device that we’ve come to expect in these types of movies, and if this were any other movie, it’d be eye-roll inducing. But in this movie, with this actor, it’s a subtle but unmistakable dig at these types of happenstance-driven plot devices.

All of these individual character arcs lead up to the triumphant wish-fulfilling ending. Craig Robinson has his music career and his masculinity back, John Cusack is married to the mystery girl, and Lou hasn’t killed himself. The whole thing is clearly setup to be over-the-top and hammering home the idea that this movie is satirizing these kinds of happy endings, but there’s just enough saccharine sentimentality to lull the audience into a false sense of wish-fulfillment satisfaction. In particular, the soundtrack selection at the end fits perfectly with the movie’s “toeing the line” approach to wish-fulfillment. It’s “Once In A Lifetime” by The Talking Heads, which if you just listen to the lilting piano and the “Letting the days go by” refrain, seems like a nice, sweet way to end this movie.

But if you take a closer look at the lyrics of the song, you see that it fits surprisingly well with the movie’s dark undertones:

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was
…
You may ask yourself, what is that beautiful house?
You may ask yourself, where does that highway lead to?
You may ask yourself, am I right, am I wrong?
You may say to yourself, my god, what have I done?

“My god, what have I done,” indeed. I think this applies to both the characters who, until their improbable time travel journey, have largely wasted their lives, as well as to the audience who keeps buying into silly and ultimately unproductive wish-fulfillment fantasies.

Man, that’s dark. I hate to end this on such a down note, so to pick things back up a bit, let me leave you with a bit of John Cusack wish-fulfillment fantasy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j379JbL-xM