Review 194: Back to the Future

Back to the Future is an incredible time-travel adventure movie and one of my favourite science fiction adventure comedy movies.

Seventeen year old Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is accidentally sent back in time from 1985 to 1955 in a time machine built from a DeLorean by eccentric scientist Emmett "Doc" Brown (Christopher Lloyd), when attacked by Libyans from whom Brown stole the plutonium which gives the flux capacitor the 1.21 gigawatts needed for time travel. Upon arriving in 1955, Marty inadvertently causes his mother Lorraine (Lea Thompson) to fall in love with him, rather than with his father George McFly (Crispin Glover), beginning a paradox that would cause Marty to disappear from existence. With no additional plutonium to power the time machine, Marty must find the 1955 version of Doc Brown to help him reunite his parents and return to 1985. The efforts of Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson), George's bully and future employer, further complicates Marty's situation.

The tightly plotted and fast paced script keeps the majority of the action local and contained.

The idea that a teen travels back in time to when his parents were still at high school is just mindblowing. The genesis for Back to the Future came when co-writer Bob Gale found his father's high school yearbook and discovered he was president of his graduating class whilist visiting his parents in St. Louis Missouri.
As Roger Ebert rather eloquently put it in Siskel & Ebert's on-air review "Everybody grows up thinking my parents were never young whereas the parents think they were never old". That idea that parents had rebelious parts of their youths is a very foreign idea to children

The themes of nostalgia, family dynamics and values being passed to different generations, friendship 

Director Robert Zemeckis' direction is absolutely superb, the cinematography is beautiful and captures the beauty of the 80's and 50's, the production design (recreating the past and the present) is incredible, the special effects are spectacular, the score by Alan Silvestri is sensational, the costumes are brilliant, the stunts are fantastic, the make up is rich, the sound effects are brilliant, the action scenes are thrilling well choreographed and brilliantly put together, there are some terrific moments of suspense and thrills, it's well paced, as the film goes one the tension keeps knotching up, the soundtrack is terrific and the effect of the closing sequence is exhilarating.

The whole cast was wonderful, Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd play their roles effortlessly, they also have wonderful screen chemistry and their the friendship which sores across time is one of the strongest friendships ever displayed on screen.

When we're first introduced to Marty, he's  his family's dysfunctional, he doesn't really have much of a relationship with his siblings, his parents are 
as the initial trailer rather eloquently put is "1985 is not his year"  Marty has to teach his father George about important things in life like standing up for himself like George probably told him. 

Lloyd playing both 85 era and the 55 era Doc Brown 

 

Crispin Glover and Lea Thompson are just wonderful playing George & Lorraine McFly 

Glover perfectly captures his shy persona,  is fabulous as Lorraine McFly and plays her with a beautiful quirkiness  George's weakness is a burden that Marty carries.

Thomas F. Wilson is Biff, he really is intimidating but in fun way.

 
Marc McClure, Wendie Jo Sperber and Claudia Wells round out the films charming cast playing Marty's siblings Dave and Linda McFly and girlfriend, Jennifer Parker respectively with

Back to the Future is an inventive, funny, and breathlessly constructed time-travel movie with an unforgettable spirit and a benchmark for time-travel movies in general, 5/5.

The Anonymous Critic.