The 10 definitive time travel movies

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 16:52:00 +0000

To commemorate the release of the deliriously stupid "Hot Tub Time Machine," here are some of the most memorable excursions into Einsteinian paradox from cinema history. Ranging from the sublime (Richard Kelly's mysterious cult hit "Donnie Darko") to the ridiculous ("Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure"), from huge hits like the "Terminator" and "Back to the Future" series to leaden flops like "The Time Traveler's Wife" and from the deadly serious to the gleefully comic, these movies illustrate the central paradox of time travel: Go back far enough, and your mom was really hot.

We've excerpted blurbs from the relevant Salon reviews (where available) or borrowed comments from one of our favorite outside critics, Roger Ebert. -- Andrew O'Hehir

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“Hot Tub Time Machine”: Just jump in!

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 14:30:00 +0000

If you hop a ride in the dudely new comedy "Hot Tub Time Machine," here's what you get: A reckless celebration of casual drug abuse and meaningless sex that makes vulgar sport of women with big hair, gay men in general, disabled people, dismembering injuries, members of Poison and Mötley Crüe, deceased pop celebrities, ski-patrol douche bags, Internet geeks and, most of all, the bruised egos of middle-aged guys. Beyond that, "Hot Tub Time Machine" takes the universal human longing to reimagine and relive the past -- which has fueled artists and poets from the Lascaux cave-painters through Proust and Fitzgerald -- and reduces it to cheap, foul and thoroughly amoral humor.

Don't get me wrong: These are the things that make "Hot Tub Time Machine" awesome. Let me see if I can get myself into the newspaper ads here: Turn on the jets for a funky-fresh ride into the spandex '80s! Strip down and jump in! The water's fine -- and so are the honeys! Best hot-tub-time-machine flick of all time! Zanier than "Jacuzzi to the Jurassic"! More naked high jinks than "Spa Wars 2: Toga! Toga! Toga!" Out-sizzles "Cocaine, Chlorine and Cleopatra"! (Let's not discuss the banned Eurosleaze Spanish Inquisition classic, "Boil the Witch.")

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The 10 definitive time travel movies

“Hot Tub Time Machine”: Just jump in!