Rob Corddry does a good job of playing a total jerk. Too good, in fact — like, the Laurence Olivier of assholes — and it makes Hot Tub Time Machine 2 an oppressive experience. Without John Cusack returning to anchor the ensemble, the group dynamic that worked well (enough) in 2010’s original Hot Tub Time Machine is thrown off — way off — and not even the addition of Adam Scott (TV’s Parks and Recreation) can save it.

Ideally, characters should interact with one another in a way that achieves balance, so that those best in small doses remain in small doses. Here, it’s like that jerk kid on the school playground who would jump off the teeter-totter while you were at the highest point in the air, so you would come crashing to the ground with too little notice to do anything about it.

As HTTM2 opens, fatuous Lou (Corddry, Sex Tape) is swimming in millions from co-opting the best business ideas since the first film’s time trip. Nick (Craig Robinson, This Is the End) is swimming in millions from co-opting all the hit songs since. And Lou’s loser son, Jacob (Clark Duke, Kick-Ass 2), is still a loser, having co-opted nothing. Success-to-excess turns to tragedy when Lou is shot in the penis (ha) by an unknown assailant at his own shindig. To save him and his junk, the trio leaps into the titular dimension-trippin’ Jacuzzi for another rollicking adventure in history.

Immediately, two things go wrong:
1. Instead of going back in time to prevent the violent act, they accidentally jettison 10 years forward.
2. Comedy does not travel with them.

Not everything should be sequelized. The original HTTM was just clever enough in tweaking the collective nipple of 80s sex comedies to surpass being a one-joke movie — with its title being that joke, of course. By contrast, HTTM2 actually is a one-joke movie — one good joke, at least; featured prominently in the trailer, it involves the TV series Fringe.

What returning director Steve Pink and lone credited screenwriter Josh Heald (one of three during the first dip) consider to be jokes simply do not translate as humorous, no matter how many times they trot them out. All of them lazy and low-hanging, these gags fall into three categories:
1. saying “fuck” simply for the sake of saying “fuck”: 145 times in 93 minutes.
2. gay panic and/or fear of anal rape to the point of homophobia.
3. stoner references that assume their mere mention is the setup, delivery and punch line, all in one. —Rod Lott

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Should you be fortunate enough not to know the meaning of the term “dirty Sanchez,” I want to tell you two things:
1. Hi, Mom!
2. You will abhor this movie.

And if the phrase does reside within your vocabulary bank, you may abhor it anyway. As far as I know, Dirty Sanchez: The Movie is the only DVD release to come with its own branded barf bag, tucked into the case; its inclusion is fitting.

What the Jackass crew is to America, the Dirty Sanchez boys are to Great Britain, except that I truly love the Jackass movies. Among the four rabble-rousers of Sanchez, none possesses the likability of a Johnny Knoxville to help mitigate the utter douchebaggery of others. Combined with thought going into the pranks, having a Knoxville on the team makes all the difference. (The Jackass solo projects of Steve-O and especially Bam Margera support this theory.)

To quote one of the multitatted Sanchez-ers, “God, you kids will do some stupid things.” And not a one works as funny.

Those things include piercing a fingernail with a dart, squirting chili sauce into the eyes, Super Glue-ing one’s nostrils shut, shooting a pellet gun at one’s own penis and other acts of bodily harm. Unlike Jackass, this gang targets only one another; gone and missed are elaborate, Allen Funt-flavored gags that involve unsuspecting members of the public. (Sanchez plays “Guess the Ladyboy” in Thailand, but those dancers are willing participants, right down to showing the dong.)

In their place? Straight-up urinating — full stream ahead — on a slumbering cohort and allowing one’s face to be the recipient of another man’s shat-out beer enema. The “highlight” centers around one Sanchez teammate submitting to liposuction while awake, and the resulting sucked-out fat later gets knocked back in a shot glass and slurped up with a spoon. Of course the waste doesn’t stay down long, being vomited back up and into a waiting bucket; such is the circle of life. —Rod Lott

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One good joke can be found in Superfast!, a super-crappy comedy you should avoid, so I’m going to “spoil” the bit: A police dispatcher is heard saying, “We’ve got a black guy in a white neighborhood minding his own business. All units respond.”

There. Ninety-nine minutes of your life has been saved. No need to thank me; it’s what I do.

In their first parody flick since 2013’s The Starving Games, gruesome twosome Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer apply their razor-dull wit to spoof the Fast and the Furious franchise — largely the 2001 original and 2011’s Fast Five. Whichever chapter of that series is your least favorite, rest assured it is miles upon miles better — and funnier — than this flaccid enterprise. There is not enough nitrous oxide in the world to convince me otherwise.

So unimaginative are Friedberg and Seltzer that the main characters share the same first names as the F&F actors whose roles they’re making fun of: The Vin Diesel character here is named Vin; the Michelle Rodriguez character is named Michelle, and so on. The exception is the Paul Walker character, who gets rechristened Lucas, presumably out of respect for the too-soon dead. Vin (Dale Pavinksi, Takers) is cross-eyed and chrome-domed; Lucas (Alex Ashbaugh, The Canyons) drives a rainbows-and-unicorns-emblazoned car with an “I Brake for Hugs” bumper sticker; and Michelle (Andrea Navedo, Porn ’n Chicken) is a barely closeted lesbian, because ha-ha.

With throwaway jabs at Pitch Perfect and the Grand Theft Auto video games that land as well a gymnast with no depth perception, Superfast! is like all the other Friedberg/Seltzer mockery movies, including Vampires Suck and Meet the Spartans: It aims low — at Cracked magazine-level — and misses even that. —Rod Lott

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Like Snakes on a Plane and Hot Tub Time Machine before it, WolfCop is one of those titles where … well, where all you really need to hear is the title: Either you’re immediately in or forever out. I was so “in,” I was whatever the movie-watching equivalent of “DTF” is.

In a sleepy, snowy Canadian town overtaken by meth, Sgt. Lou Garou (Leo Fafard, until now an unknown entity) works (sometimes) to keep the peace. He’s one of the sheriff’s department’s three members, yet he barely counts since he’s perpetually tardy and decidedly alcoholic. So lazy is Lou that upon waking (hungover) one morning, he initially doesn’t notice the pentagram crudely carved into his upper body. Later, however, he does notice his human penis transform into an animal one, because that’s how you get a guy’s attention nowadays. In short order, Lou’s other parts shape-shift in goopy, gory pain, as a result of whatever the hell happened to him the night before.

Yep, this pig has become a werewolf — a WolfCop, if you will — and with the new way of life come distinct advantages, all the better to fight crime with: super strength, a keener-than-keen sense of smell, a bitchin’ modified police cruiser, a sidekick in the conspiracy-minded gun store owner (Jonathan Cherry, Final Destination 2) and — best of the best — the increased amorous attention of the town’s sex-on-a-stick bartender (Sarah Lind, Severed: Forest of the Dead), who’s not above a little Red Riding Hood role-play.

A big leap up for writer/director Lowell Dean (whose previous film, the 2013 zombie flick 13 Eerie, showed visual promise and not much else), WolfCop belongs to that rare breed of horror-comedy: one that’s truly funny. With game performances and confident control over tone, Dean strikes the proper balance necessary for delivering laughs without spoofing itself. Make no mistake: It’s in on its own joke, but thankfully free of winks to drive that point home. Dean even keeps the insanity restrained until it no longer makes sense to do so; at that point, he loosens his firm grip on the leash and lets the thing run wild. You’ll understand why and thank him for it.

Nearly start-to-finish rollicking, WolfCop is an instant cult classic. —Rod Lott

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As the first film presented by the Dread Central website, Zombieworld would be expected to be a full-fledged horror film. Instead, it’s a collection of about a dozen shorts, most of which existed prior to this project, not to mention an outright comedy. That’s not a bad thing — just something its packaging takes great pains to hide.

Loosely tying the segments together is the ongoing newscast of anchorman Marvin Gloatt (Bill Oberst Jr., Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies) as the world succumbs to a zombie apocalypse, himself included. In increasing states of decomposition, Gloatt and his toupee break away to reports from around the globe. These are the shorts, of course, involving everything from a convenience store to a mailman to a video game. One resembles found footage, while another a mock training film. The bit set in Australia contains no levity whatsoever, making it stick out for all the wrong reasons.

Doing so for the right reasons are the hysterical, over-the-top bookends by Spanish co-directors David Muñoz and Adrián Cardona: Fist of Jesus, which pits Christ and sidekick Judas against a horde of the undead, and Brutal Relax, following a mental patient on a beach holiday interrupted by an invasion of zombies from the sea. Gleeful in their goriness, both pieces seem like Mad magazine parodies adapted for the screen by Sam Raimi circa Evil Dead 2.

Representing the collective work of 14 directors, Zombieworld is not an all-star celebration along the lines of The ABCs of Death — unless you consider Wrestlemaniac influential or noteworthy (and I sure don’t, as that 2006 luchador slasher is barely watchable) — so approach it as an opportunity be exposed to the genre’s potential up-and-comers. All in all, the movie is as uneven as a vertiginous hunchback attempting to stay atop a rolling log, but the shorts that do hit merit the time invested. —Rod Lott

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