I've figured it out.  I have figured it out and apparently so has Hollywood.  If you want to make a hit comedy you simply need to follow these few simple rules.  Here they are.

1) Make every other word "fuck."  Do it.  As many as  you can fit in your dialoge.  The word has become a noun, a veb, an adjective, everything.  You can literally write the sentence "Fuck you, you fucking fuck" and the F-Word means three different things.  So essentially, just make "fuck" your dialog.  People love it.

2) Dick jokes, dick jokes, dick jokes, dick jokes, dick jokes.  Don't be afraid to use the occasional vagina joke either, but best to stick to the dick.  Jokes to do with semen are an extension of the dick joke, and they generally elicit disgust from the audience, so include of few of those too.

3) Projectile vomiting or other bodily fluid sprayed about.  If you can make it land on somebody as a punch line, generally the film's antagonist, even better!

4) Binge drinking and excessive drug use.  If you can make this the plot, or the plot device that furthers the story, you are almost guaranteed to strike gold.

5) Boobies.

6) More dick jokes.

 That's it. Six simple steps and you have a crowd pleasing comedy.  It is guranteed.  Reference any of the following hit comedies for further proof: "Superbad", "I Love You, Man", "Observe And Report", "Forgetting Sarah Marshall", "Knocked Up", "The Hangover", "The Heartbreak Kid", "The 40 Year Old Virgin", "I Now Pronounce You Chuck And Larry", "Pineapple Express"...sorry, my fingers are getting tired, but the list goes on and on.

 And now we have "Hot Tub Time Machine."  Don't worry, HTTM is not trying to reinvent the comedy wheel.  Despite what you may think, the film's title is the only thing original about the movie.  They aren't really trying to venture into creative new comedy ground with something as wonderfully absurd as hot tub time travel.  No way!  The filmmakers are too smart for that.  They already know what works.  Like the list of comedies I already mentioned, HTTM observes all of my criteria for achieving comedy gold.  It has F-bombs, it has dick jokes (and even some semen!), it has projectile vomiting, not once but twice, some urine, a car key being dug out of a canine's nether regions, binge drinking, excessive drug use, more dick jokes, and boobies.  HTTM is smart enough to know that if you want a hit comedy you better not be smart.  Smart is like comedy kryptonite.  Smart is the kiss of death!  Immature is what sells today, and even worse, it's what sells R-rated comedy today.  Comedy for adults that could be written by twelve year olds.  

HTTM's biggest failure is that it had potential.  It starts off well.  The characters are intriguing, all living disasterous lives.  How did they find themselves in these situations?  Where did they go wrong in the course of their lives to get them there?  I'm certain we'll find out when they go back in time in that hot tub!  Not so fast.  How about instead of explaining anything about the character's pasts, let's just show you a guy vomiting on a squirrel.  Instead of using this time travel plot device as a way for our characters to course correct their lives and reveal what went wrong in the first place, let's make lame, dirivitive gags about the 1980's.  

However the problem with HTTM is not the gags, the plot, or the 80's hate.  It's the characters.  More often than not the hero of contemporary  comedy is the "manchild," and, like I said, HTTM follows the rules.  The men are children.  Crying, vomiting, and wetting their pants.  They are also masogonistic, homophobic, and totally unlikeable.  In addition the four leads have no chemistry with each other.  Because of this, the few times the film attempts to take itself seriously with poignient moments of bromance are the few times the movie is actually funny.  It's attempting to say "hey audience, we want you to care about these characters now!"  It's silly to expect the audience to care when the filmmakers didn't care about them from the beginning.

In the end, HTTM can't be faulted for being unoriginal, predictable, and vulgar, it's simply following the rules.  The highest grossing comedies of the last decade have proven that audiences want to see movies like this.  If HTTM does badly and is not a frat house fixture for years to come, I will be very surprised.  If this movie is not quoted by meatheads and replayed endlessly on TNT, I will eat my shoe.  This is what people have come to expect from contemporary comedy.

As I left the theater I fantasized about having a hot tub time machine of my own.  I would be curious to go a few decades into the future and see how history has treated this era in comedy.  Will these films be regarded as a reflection of the times, when manchildren ran amuck and obsessed over jokes about their penises.  Or will it be seen as a moment in film history when comedy became so recycled and uninspried it ultimately gave way to a comedy renassiance of intelligent and original works.  Or will it simply be unremarkable with the exception of this blog posting, which will only serve as the footnote of a film goer who had heard one dick joke too many?  Only time will tell.