Hot Tub Time Machine 2, the painfully unfunny sequel to its very funny predecessor, is a movie about three dicks making dick jokes in the future. If you’ve never seen boobs before, love cutting class with your pre-teen skater homies, and draw genitalia on your friends’ faces when they pass out on the couch, you’re going to get a kick out of this movie, bro. But for the rest of us, this laugh-less, schlocky parade of ill-conceived gags has the entertainment value of, well, hanging out with a bunch of pre-teen skater homies for an hour and a half. Juvenile humor can be funny when it’s done right, but most of the time, it just pisses me off. I’ve got better things to do.

The first movie saw four friends travel back through a time portal to a pivotal weekend in 1986, while the sequel sends them hurtling forward in time to 2025. John Cusack starred in that film as the straight man, but he wisely declined a return for director Steve Pink’s second spin in the sci-fi jacuzzi. Rob Corddry is the lead this go-round, reprising his role as scumbag drug addict Lou, now the billionaire head of search engine empire “Lougle” and lead singer of hair metal outfit “Motley Lou”. Also exploiting his post-1986 insider info is Nick (Craig Robinson), who’s made a career as a pop star by releasing crummy versions of songs that haven’t been released yet, like Lisa Loeb’s “Stay” and the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling”. Jacob (Clark Duke), Lou’s son, hasn’t done much of anything since the events of the first movie, resigning himself to just hanging out in his dad’s mansion.

The plot starts in earnest when Lou’s genitals get blown away by a shotgun-wielding mystery man at his own party. Nick and Duke drag Lou’s emasculated ass to the hot tub to go back in time and stop his murderer. Instead, they jump 10 years ahead and find themselves in a world where man-skirts are all the rage, Jessica Williams is the host of the Daily Show, reality TV has life-or-death stakes, and smart cars hold grudges. To call any of Pink and screenwriter Josh Heald’s future gags “satirical” would be insanely generous, and they know that. But seriously, none of their jokes about technology are even worth a chuckle, so what’s the point of the future setting anyway? It’s a missed opportunity.

The first thing the three amigos do upon arriving in the future is seek out their old pal Adam, though what they find instead is his clean-cut son, Adam Jr. (Adam Scott), who happens to be getting married the next day, but decides to accompany his dad’s buddies on their mission anyway, because why the f*ck not? When Lou, the douchebag that he is, tricks Adam Jr. into taking an extreme mind-altering drug at a night club, so starts the craziest 24 hours of the soon-to-be husband’s life, in which he does unspeakable things like have butt sex with Nick. Yes, that’s what this movie is.

Like the far superior Anchorman franchise, Hot Tub 2 rattles off jokes rapid-fire, the silly, moronic back-and-forth between its characters bludgeoning us remorselessly. The problem is, while Anchorman hits you with hilarious line after hilarious line, Hot Tub 2 hits you with dud after dud after dud, and one can only take so much before the failed attempts become utterly exhausting. What’s worse, the film takes a strange turn toward morality in its final act, promoting faithfulness and sobriety and self-accountability. You know: adult stuff.

Why? WHY? It’s as if right before they started production they were like, “Oh crap! This movie needs to say something meaningful! We have a responsibility to the people!” If these guys made the movie as an excuse to hang with their buddies, make some dough, and slap together some dumb jokes they’ve had rattling around in their heads, they should just fess up and embrace it, not try to dupe us into thinking there’s more to this movie than there is.

The talent on hand is a talented bunch, but their skills go to waste. This may be Corddry and Robinson’s worst work yet, but Duke’s acting is actually pretty solid most of the time, making Jacob the most memorable character by far. Hot Tub Time Machine 2 left me completely drained. Films of its ilk that lean heavily on pop culture references and rape humor will hopefully die out in the next few years, and at best, this comedy stinker will help expedite that process.

The incestuous nature of today’s comedy scene can easily be shown with the cast of Hell Baby. The film is written and directed by Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, who were members of the comedy troupe The State with Michael Ian Black and David Wain, who both have bit parts in Hell Baby. Wain works on Childrens Hospital with Hell Baby co-stars Rob Huebel and Rob Corddry. Paul Scheer (whose own show NTSF:SD:SUV:: plays right after Childrens) and Keegan Michael Key have both guest starred on Childrens Hospital. Key has his own show Key and Peele which airs on Comedy Central, the same network that Lennon and Garant made Reno! 911 on. Leslie Bibb and Kumail Nanjiani have starred in Burning Love, a web series created by the Childrens Hospital team, and Riki Lindholme has frequented on podcasts with many of her co-stars.

It may be hard to wrap one’s head around all the connections going on behind the scenes in Hell Baby, a film that feels as lightweight as the different podcasts almost everyone in the film has participated in. Garant and Lennon, who have made plenty of money writing major studio films like Night at the Museum, put this movie together independently on a small budget. The lack of funds ends up working in the film’s favour, as it makes its flaws easier to forgive. Hell Baby comes across as a group of talented funny people haphazardly making a film together, and while the results may be incredibly uneven, it’s still funny enough to give a chance.

A happily married and expecting couple (Corddry and Bibb) move into their new house, a barely standing but large home in New Orleans that they hope to renovate and sell at a huge profit. It doesn’t take long for them to find out from their neighbour (Key) that the house has a terrible past, and in no time Bibb has been possessed by some sort of evil force. At the same time, two priests from the Vatican (Garant and Lennon) come to investigate the haunted house, teaming up with two cops (Corddry and Huebel) who remain skeptical. The plot is mostly irrelevant, with its by the numbers take on the demonic possession film serving as a set up for the genre-related jokes or bizarre segues that happen throughout. The constant jump scares, which get to the point where a character screams “I am sick of being startled!”, get a laugh every time, while a random running gag involving a sandwich shop falls flat.

But, as talented as the cast is, they can only make so much of the material work. When Hell Baby hits the mark, it can be fall-down funny, but the misses can be unbearable to watch. Lennon and Garant’s Vatican priests mostly do boring improvisational bits in bad accents, with scenes of them going to strip clubs that show how jokes about priests doing unholy things haven’t been funny or relevant in decades. Once Garant and Lennon’s subplot merges with the demonic insanity going on with Corddry and Bibb, along with the introduction of Bibb’s free-spirited sister (Lindhome), things reach a zany peak that bring plenty of laughs. Hell Baby, which is out now on VOD, is custom made for the format. Its low-rent qualities make it for suitable for TV viewing, and it’s entirely possible that down the line the film might gain more fans through showings on TV (this is begging for a movie slot on Comedy Central). It’s far from a consistent film, but Hell Baby could be an ideal way to get a few laughs while trying to kill time.

Hell Baby trailer