What's so funny about midlife crisis?

Two movies to maybe leave off your DVD viewing pile if you’re trying to sail calmly through the waters of midlife are Hot Tub Time Machine and Greenberg. Both are recent films that ask the age-old question, “What are we doing here?” (as in, you know, on this planet) and, while one is disguised as a no-brainer sexploitation comedy, the other is as ponderous and oblique as, well, Noah Baumbach (director of The Squid and the Whale).

Midlife crisis is a Hollywood staple, of course. In decades past it was movies like 18 Again, Peggy Sue Got Married, Back to the Future and the Freaky Friday remake that tapped into this perennial anxiety. The movies are often coupled with the fantasy notion that you can go back and “fix” the past or somehow “save” the future. (I myself somehow completely missed out on having a midlife crisis. It soared right by me, oblivious, while I was busy doing other things. And now that I’m ready for one, it’s too late to have a legitimate cri de coeur. My timing’s always been a bit off.)

Of the two, Hot Tub Time Machine is probably the one to watch when your brain needs a little less trouble. It’s the essence of “low concept” the title probably cooked up by the writers between bong hits, but then they forgot to cook up a punchline. But it’s funny. It has that going for it.

John Cusack is Adam, a guy stuck in a midlife crisis. He’s no longer the wide-eyed, chipmunk-faced guy in all those ‘80s movies; his latest girlfriend has walked out, he has an unfulfilling life and job, and his friends are two equally clueless men (Rob Corddry, that guy from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and Craig Robinson, that funny, soulful bouncer guy from Knocked Up) and a dorky nephew (Clark Duke) who never leaves his laptop and Second Life.

When Lou (Corddry) attempts suicide, they all decide to pack their bags and head for Kodiak Valley Ski Resort, the scene of most of their favorite moments of debauchery back in the cherished ‘80s. Except it’s all boarded up and dilapidated, and even their cabin’s hot tub has a dead varmint floating in it.

Undeterred, they try to party like it’s 1986. When the hot tub mysteriously beckons after midnight — clean and varmint-free, and glowing yellow — they hop in and get drunk on some illegal imported beverage calledChernobly, which somehow spills onto the master circuits. (Really, this is the best explanation the screenwriters could come up with for what follows.)

The next morning, tortuously hung over, they notice everyone’s sporting Gore-Tex and teased hair; Men Without Hats is playing on the jukebox; Reagan’s on TV (so is Alf); and some guy’s loading a cassette tape! Into a Walkman!!

Before you can say “forward to the past,” they figure out they’ve somehow leaped back to 1986, and in order to avoid the “Butterfly Effect,” they must do everything exactly as they did back in that year: Adam must dump his girlfriend, Nick (Robinson) must cheat on his (future) wife, Lou must get his ass whooped by sport-o types from the Ski Patrol, and Jacob (Duke) must… get conceived.

If it all sounds like a gross-out combo of Back to the Future and Hot Dog: The Movie, well, that’s probably exactly how the scriptwriters pitched it. (Or else they just said: “Hangover in a hot tub. It’ll kill!”) There are flashes of those teen sex comedies set in ski resorts, glimpses of the Red Menace xenophobia that still blazed in ‘80s movies like Red Dawn (despite, as my wife pointed out, newly minted Perestroika), and lots of ‘80s music (Bowie, The English Beat, Spandau Ballet, New Order; you know the drill). There’s also Crispin Glover, the weird guy who played Marty MacFly’s dad in the ur-‘80s pre-midlife crisis comedy, Back to the Future. The post-mod twist is that Glover’s a bitter, one-armed bellhop lugging bags at Kodiak, and all through the movie the main characters try to guess how he’s going to lose that arm. The other reason for sitting through this sporadically funny romp is Corddry, who brings new meaning to the phrase “despicable sleaze.” (Don’t miss his Motley Crüe impersonation in the Home, Sweet Home video during the closing credits.)

Oh, but you can’t just laugh your way through a midlife crisis. Not by a long shot. Noah Baumbach’s Greenberg proves you have to squirm as well. Ben Stiller is in one of his “stretching” modes here, playing the title character, a loathsome a-hole who can’t figure out why his life is a train wreck at age 41. (Oddly, it’s a variation on what one suspects — from Stiller playing himself in Extras and Curb Your Enthusiasm — the actor just might be like on his worst days.) New Yorker Roger Greenberg (Stiller), recently recovered from a nervous breakdown, agrees to housesit for his more successful brother, Philip, in California. He has an awkward fling with Philip’s personal assistant Florence (Greta Gerwig), writes withering complaint letters to Starbucks, American Airlines and others about various perceived deficiencies, and tries simply, as he puts it, to “do nothing” with his life. In other words, he’s ducking a midlife crisis, but it’s out there, right around the corner, probably hiding in the hot tub, waiting to bite his ass.

With a character as singularly charmless as Greenberg (the story idea came from producer Jennifer Jason Leigh; hmm, wonder who it’s based on...?), it’s hard to believe he’s capable of seducing a 25-year-old dolly like Gerwig. But she inexplicably likes him, seeing something the audience is completely blind to throughout Baumbach’s exegesis. In a way, it’s a rehash of the Annie Hall scenario — New York fish out of water comes out west and immediately applies his anal kvetching to an alien environment in brutal self-defense. Like some of the estranged old chums from Hot Tub Time Machine, Greenberg’s pals once had dreams of being in a band, signing a record deal — but Greenberg blew it for them all. Co-songwriter Ivan (Rhys Ifans) is a soulful LA ex-drug addict who patiently tolerates Greenberg’s acerbic personality. (Sample exchange in diner: Ivan opines that “Youth is wasted on the young.” Greenberg ripostes, deadpan: “I would go further. I would say life is wasted on… people.” Midlife crisis has rarely been so chillingly bleak.)

The funniest thing about Greenberg is the marketing. Possibly perplexed and panicking that they had not received another Night at the Museum sequel, the marketing team use pictures of Stiller and Gerwig smiling (awkwardly) on the DVD case; a sample review quote says, “The wonder of this film is how good it makes us feel.” Huh?? A more apt poster would bear a warning label: “MAY INDUCE SUICIDE OR DESPERATE LIFE CHANGES IN THE MIDDLE AGED.”

It’s praise, I suppose, to say that Baumbach’s examination of aging goes about 100 levels deeper than Hot Tub Time Machine, but what doesn’t, really? Watching Greenberg’s repeated epic fails at being a human being is painful stuff, not popcorn viewing by any measure. Los Angeles is depicted as an alienated wasteland of dark condos with minimal fluorescent lighting, the kind of place that Adam Sandler occupied in Punch Drunk Love, another bleak midlife crisis that, in comparison, was a light rom-com. The funniest, most painful scene, perhaps, is Greenberg getting wasted among a party of 20-somethings and berating them for being better prepared for life than he is. (“You’re all so mean! Your parents were too good at parenting. All that Baby Mozart and Dan Zanes songs… You’re so sincere and interested in things… And it makes you mean. There’s a confidence to you that’s horrifying. You say things to someone like me who is older and smarter with this blithe air…”) The next scene, he’s gazing down into his brother’s swimming pool along with the rest of the partygoers. Floating there is… a dead varmint.

Coincidence? There are no coincidences in midlife crisis.

We wait patiently for Greenberg to experience transformation — nothing falsely major, accompanied by soundtracked montage as in Jerry Maguire, just some tiny hints that he’s going to change. A little. It does come, but just before the fade to black, and so obliquely that, if you blink, you might misses it. Just as Roger Greenberg almost misses it.