Late for Dinner

Time Out says

A dusty gas-guzzler slithers along a desert road. Frank (Berg) can't drive - he's not quite right in the head - but at least he doesn't have a bullet in his chest like his brother Willie (Wimmer). In the limbo of LA's sub-suburbs, these two hapless fugitives come to rest in the laboratory of one Doc Chilblains (Brundin), experimenter in cryonics. It is 1962. The next morning, it is 1991. Nonplussed, Frank maintains they must be late for dinner. The rest of the world supposes these defrosting hicks are simply out to lunch. This starts in quirky fashion, shifts into an amiable retread of Back to the Future, then trundles to a standstill on the home straight. Willie and Frank return to Santa Fe, an ageing wife (Harden) and grown-up child (Flynn), and suddenly it's terms of endearment time, a laborious restoration of family, hearth and home. Even if you can stomach this sentimental retardation, the film still manages to outstay its welcome.

Author: TCh