interesting take on hot tube time machine.... SPOILERS

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WARNING: MASSIVE SPOILERS * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * the entire 80's sequence is going on in Lou's head as he commits suicide in the garage. this is why the main part of the movie seems to be such a disjointed mess of 80's cultural elements, elements which have been picked apart elsewhere in these forums and decried as historical errors.

in one of these forum threads the question is asked "Who found Lou after he tried to commit suicide and brought him to the hospital?" this question is the first key to understanding the movie. in fact, Lou was NOT found. the entire movie after the suicide scene was his fantasy world he imagined to himself as he listened to that Motley Crue song in his car and gunned the engine. he was loaded on an energy drink we see him holding and the vodka he is sucking down. frustrated by the turn his life has taken and by his friends' abandonment of him, he has worked himself into a frenzied state in which he imagines his friends uniting at the hospital and then their returning to the resort where he had his best memories with them. Etc.

we know this because in the end as the credits roll he has imagined himself into an actual Motley Crue video, the video of the same song he was singing as he killed himself. he obviously loves that song and has seen the video a million times and uses it as a refuge from his disappointing present-day life. the song takes him back in his mind to what he sees as the one time in his life when everything was great.

before dismissing this theory about the film's true intent, first try assuming that there is more to the movie than first meets the eye and consider these points:

even if the time machine existed and he could make himself rich by prior knowledge of modern advances he still would not be able to infiltrate a legendary rock band and take the lead singer's place. this was fantasy.

things in Lou's version of the 80's are not necessarily how they really were, but how Lou is remembering them. therefore the "errors" are deliberate. the most flagrant thing is the very Motley Crue song, Home Sweet Home, which acts as Lou's theme song. that song came out before 1986, the time period of the events of the ski resort. Motley Crue was already huge. it was clearly too late to become the band's lead singer, no matter what special privileges traveling back from 2010 might give you.

on the one hand, you could conclude that the movie is stupid because everyone knows that Home Sweet Home was already out at that time. but on the other hand you could assume the writer of the movie is actually trying to tell us something else - the whole thing is going on in Lou's head as he checks out from the world.

with this in mind, if you re-watch the initial hospital scene after he was supposedly found and brought in the dialogue makes more sense.

for example, when Nick and Adam meet up at the hospital they obviously are not at ease with each other and unfamiliar. it has been a long time, and they also are ill at ease with the idea of having to deal with Lou. then 3 minutes later at Lou's bedside they gleefully announce that they have hatched a plan to take Lou to the K Valley ski resort to relive their former glory days. really? they can barely relax being in the same room together. when did they decide all that?

this and similar details only make sense if Lou is imagining it all. the movie begins with him committing suicide while drunkenly singing Home Sweet Home, a cherished moment from his past. then after a completely surreal sequence of events from back in the 80's, the only time Lou was ever happy in life, the movie ends with the same song, but now he has actually BECOME the lead singer of Motley Crue and has been inserted into the MTV video of that song playing in his head as he belts out each line of the lyrics at the top of his lungs. the makers of the film are trying to tell us something. Lou was always the wild one of the bunch, and now in his frustration he has really gone all the way. he has receded into his mind to a place of no return. at the end of that video as the credits roll Lou looks straight into the camera, flips us the bird and then the image freezes on his final sly grin. Lou is gone.

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