'Hot Tub 2' gives sequels bad name.

Byline: John Defore

'Hot Tub Time Machine 2'

Unstarred Review

A Paramount release

Rating: R for crude sexual content and language throughout, graphic nudity, drug use and some violence

Running time: 1 hour, 32 minutes

LOS ANGELES -- A sweaty cash grab that gives a bad name to sequels in which key talent has jumped ship, Steve Pink's "Hot Tub Time Machine 2'' leaps forward rather than backward in time and sort of makes one wish the world had ended while it was en route.

Suffering from much more than awkwardness over the absence of the original's top-billed John Cusack, though it is certainly awkward about that, the film makes us wonder why we enjoyed spending time with his three returning co-stars (Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson and Clark Duke) in the first place. Viewers who expected nothing from the first but were pleasantly surprised will get burned badly here, assuming toxic word-of-mouth doesn't keep them from returning to these fetid waters.

Josh Heald's screenplay shows its dearth of imagination from its opening scene, a rote, TV-newsmagazine-like explanation of what has happened to his characters since they made their leap back in time. Lou (Corddry) founded a Google-like company and became a mogul with a David Lee Roth-ish lifestyle. Nick (Robinson) had a blockbuster music career by "writing'' hit songs before their actual authors were old enough to record them. Inexplicably, Lou's son Jacob (Duke) did nothing with the advantages knowledge of future events gave him. Instead of making his own fortune, he suffers daily humiliation as his dad's butler.

When Lou is shot in the groin by one of the many other people he has offended (groins will endure much...