I have recently come to the startling discovery that I am never going to grow up. When I was in my teens and twenties I looked at older generations and thought I would eventually be like them: Settled, sedate, focused. As I approach my fortieth birthday, however, I realize I haven’t changed at all. I still act out and get loud and raunchy and say the same basic things I said when I was a kid; except now I have the confidence and experience to speak my mind more assuredly. I still like teen movies. Forgive me for my bias, but the 80’s were the best! John Hughes, Breakfast Club, Better off Dead, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, etc. How can you top that generation for great coming of age, teen flicks? This is why I still love anything 80’s!

When I saw the preview for Hot Tub Time Machine I knew it would be epoch; especially since it had my favorite 80’s star and teen crush, John Cusack. I have loved him in every role he has ever done (except for maybe In the Garden of Good and Evil but that was mainly because I just didn’t get that movie). Hot Tub Time Machine was a delightful romp through the styles, attitudes and music of a truly colorful decade. But is there more to it? Was it just a walk down memory lane? “A nonstop barrage …of crude, obnoxious gags and riffs”? (NY Times Web)

In reading an article by A. O. Scott of The New York Times I realized Hot Tub Time Machine’s objective was to acknowledge that Generation X was reaching forty. What is Generation X? They are the children of the Baby Boomers. Who’s birthdays fell somewhere between 1964 and 1981. Mr. Scott in his article entitled “Gen X Has a Midlife Crisis” compared Hot Tub Time Machine to The Big Chill. How can they possible compare? Both were written for a generation of people who were approaching mid life, the forties. The Big Chill (1983) was for the Baby Boomers and it couldn’t be more different than Hot Tub.

In The Big Chill college friends get together to mourn the loss of a friend who committed suicide. Over the number of days they spend together, they realize even though they are successful on paper, their lives didn’t turn out the way they wanted them to. Nick, played by John Heard, sums it up nicely in the last few minutes of the film, “A long time ago we knew each other for a short period. You don’t know anything about me. It was easy back then. No one could’ve had a cushier birth. It’s not surprising our friendship could survive that. It’s only out here in the world that it gets tough.” They are unhappy, unsatisfied and afraid they are somehow guilty for their friends’ untimely demise. The movie ends with nothing really changing in their individual lives. They part company promising to write or visit, knowing they would never do either. Their lives would go on, substantially the same, with an awareness that they didn’t possess previously.

John Heard said, “No one could’ve had a cushier birth.” The baby-boomers were born into a world of optimism and national pride. The world was laid at their feet. How are they different from Gen X? X’ers were born during a period of national malaise thanks to the failure of Vietnam. They were also the smallest generation thanks to the onset of birth control. They watched their parents throw their lives away on jobs that turned them out when they became old. My own father was laid off from a job he had invested over 30 years in when he was barely sixty. These events created a cynicism and comparative disloyalty among Gen X’ers. Douglas Coupland (author and essayist) wrote in his 1991 book Generation X that X’ers “were underemployed, overeducated, intensely private, and unpredictable.” They are called “slackers” because they refuse to work dead end jobs. Baby boomers would’ve had one, maybe two, careers. Gen X’ers will have many more. Being the MTV generation they have a short attention span. This doesn’t make them idiots for they are the entrepreneurs of the world. They prefer challenges and opportunities to build new skills so they are always on the lookout for the next adventure.

Generation X also hates meetings and spending time talking things over. They prefer to get in, do the work, and get out. This is also why The Big Chill is so different from Hot Tub Time Machine. All they do in the Big Chill is sit around and talk and analyze and occasionally fight or make love. Hot Tub is nonstop activity with numerous stories going on at once. As in Big Chill, these old college buddies are drawn together by the attempted suicide of one of their friends. They decide to revisit an old ski resort where they felt their greatest triumphs occurred. Each middle aged man tried to regain the ‘glory’ of the past only to realize it wasn’t that glorious. I have to agree with that summation. As I watched Adam and Lou fighting over whether to stay in the past or return to the present I asked myself what my decision would be.

The past is a great place to visit but nobody should have to live there. Those who do live in the past never grow. I remember the 80’s as being an awkward time. Materialism and fads were the focus. If you couldn’t keep up, you were out.  Life could sometimes be humiliating when you didn’t fit in anywhere. I wouldn’t trade the self awareness I have gained for all the youth and muscle tone of my teenage body. I look at my senior picture and see a beautiful girl but I didn’t feel that way at the time. I hated myself. Now I am not so fond of the numbers on the scale but I feel more content with whom I am inside.

Did my life turn out the way I thought it would? No, but sometimes our childish dreams aren’t what is meant to happen. Sometimes life happens and we deal with it as it comes and our ideals alter. That is called growth.

I still haven’t grown up. I have matured. But as I age I have found more reasons to love life than ever before. More reasons for contentment than ever before. Statistics say Generation X refuses to grow up as a whole. If maintaining a spirit of play and insouciance is the byproduct of growing up in the shadow of the baby boomers, I think we have coped quite well. Maybe we can show future generations that having fun doesn’t have to end. My thirties have been an engaging and life altering journey. I can’t wait for the forties!