rated R

It was a time of big dreams and bigger hair. A time when you had to fight for your right to party through a haze of sex, drugs and Kid ’n Play. It was a time when an abrasive Alien Life Form muppet could pass for viable entertainment, a used up Hollywood leading man could pass for president, and John Cusack could pass for a Hollywood leading man.

Ahh, The ’80s. Is there no embarrassment greater than thee?

Of all the potentially poignant cultural comments on this DayGlo era of cold war and leg warmers that “Hot Tub Time Machine” grazes, the one it hits dead center is the potency of the drive, no doubt remembered by anyone who was ever stuck in 1986, to just get the hell out of there.

They may have pushed the release of “Green Zone” back to allow for last year’s Iraq-based and fantastically insightful “Hurt Locker” to win its Academy Award and generate fresh interest in contemporary war stories. But be warned: “Green Zone” is no “Hurt Locker.” The newest collaboration from team “Bourne”—director Paul Greengrass, cinematographer Barry Ackroyd and actor Matt Damon—is, both in subject and execution, an exercise in questionable intelligence. Certainly, the issue of non-existing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, seven years into the war on which their menace was predicated, continues to be of dire concern and worthy of exploration. It comes as an unfortunate, if predictable, letdown that the first mainstream cinematic investigation thereof should come to us shrink-wrapped as an adrenaline fueled, Saturday matinee thrill ride with as much weight and gravitas as the butter-sopped popcorn it invites the audience to mindlessly munch along the way.