At the Movies With Peter Travers: ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ and ‘How to Train Your Dragon’
In this week’s At the Movies, Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers kicks some past with the most ingeniously titled film since Snakes on a Plane, Hot Tub Time Machine . The title alone tells you all you need to know: John Cusask, The Office‘s Craig Robinson, Rob Corddry and Clark Duke play a bunch of dudes teleported from 2010 to 1986 thanks to a time-traveling jacuzzi at a ski resort, where the men are given a second chance at life.
As the title also suggests, this film is a comedy, and while the jokes hit more than miss, Travers wishes there was a little more heart to Hot Tub. While the film pays tribute to the work of John Hughes, Back to the Future and Cusack’s first films, where those movies had soul, Hot Tub is all laughs but ultimately dead inside. However, it is a fun ride, and the always-watchable Crispin Glover, or Mr. McFly from Back to the Future, appears here as a one-armed bellhop. (He appeared in our own offices, too: watch his interview.)
For the kids out there who aren’t old enough to take a ride on the Hot Tub Time Machine, the CGI adventure How to Train Your Dragon comes out this week, and surprise, it’s in 3-D. However, while Alice in Wonderland was just a 2-D film boosted to 3-D for cash cow purposes, Dragon is truly a 3-D film, and Travers calls this story of a young Viking who befriends a dragon a “delightful” movie. Sure, this is Dreamworks and not Pixar that we’re dealing with, but the 3-D here is amazing thanks to the contributions of Oscar-winning cinematographer Roger Deakins.
This Week’s Reviews:
• Hot Tub Time Machine
• How to Train Your Dragon
• City Island
• Chloe