One of the things all teenagers believe is that their parents were never teenagers. Their parents were, possibly, children once. They are obviously adults now, but how could they have been teenagers, and yet not understand their own children? This visual is for teenagers by being one. However, “Back to the Future” is even more hopeful: It argues that you can travel to the past to when your parents were teenagers, and fix them right at the time when they needed help the most.
The movie starts in present time, with a teenager named Marty McFly, played by Michael J. Fox. Roger Ebert says, “His parents (let’s face it) are hopeless nerds.” Dad (the great Crispin Glover) tells old jokes and Mom (Lea Thompson) drinks vodka in the kitchen and dinner time is, how Ebert describes it, “like feeding time at the fun house.” Marty’s brother (Marc McClure) works at oddball jobs and his sister (Wendie Jo Sperder) has a fear of dating boys. What keeps Marty normal is being friends with the crazy Dr. Emmet “Doc” Brown, played by Christopher Lloyd, an inventor with bright eyes and hair like, how Ebert describes it, “a fright wig.” Brown has a feeling that he has found out the secret of time travel, and one night in the local shopping mall’s parking lot, he shows his invention. In this long history of movies that are based around time travel, there has never been a time machine that is anything like Brown’s, which looks exactly like a customized De Lorean.
The car works, and then, after a series of surprises, Marty finds himself traveled back 30 years into the past, to the days when the shopping mall was a farmer’s field (Ebert mentions, “there's a nice gag when the farmer thinks the De Lorean, with its gull-wing doors, is a flying saucer”). Ebert mentions, “Marty wanders into town, still wearing his 1985 clothing, and the townsfolk look at his goose down jacket and ask him why he's wearing a life preserver.”
One of the running jokes in “Back to the Future” is the way the town has changed in 30 years (Ebert notes, “for example, the porno house of 1985 was playing a Ronald Reagan movie in 1955”). However, a lot of differences run more deeply than that, as Marty finds out when he sits down at a lunch counter next to his Dad – who is, obviously, a teenager himself. Ebert says in his review, “Because the movie has so much fun with the paradoxes and predicaments of a kid meeting his own parents, I won't discuss the plot in any detail. I won't even get into the horrifying moment when Marty discovers his mother "has the hots" for him.” It’s like the Florence Nightingale Effect, which Doc notes, or you could compare it to, like Fox did, the Oedipal Complex. The movie’s surprises are one of its great pleasures.
Ebert said, “"Back to the Future" was directed by Robert ("Romancing the Stone") Zemeckis, who shows not only a fine comic touch but also some of the lighthearted humanism of a Frank Capra.” Actually, the movie does look like “It’s a Wonderful Life” and “The Wizard of Oz” more than other, conventional time-travel movies. It’s about a character that begins with one view of life and reality, and is allowed, through this De Lorean invention, to discover another. Steven Spielberg was the executive producer, and this is the second of that summer’s three Spielberg productions (the others being “The Goonies” and “Explorers”), and maybe it’s time to wonder if Spielberg is copying the great studio workers of the past, who were masters in matching the right director with the right project. This time, the match works with charm, brains and a lot of laughter.
People probably don’t know that Eric Stoltz was a temporary pick for the role of Marty around the time Fox was out filming “Teen Wolf,” but Fox was the original choice of Marty. He was just too busy with "Family Ties" at the time. Fox said in an interview, “Spielberg’s down the road doing great movies, and here I am playing a werewolf.” Fox was probably embarrassed to be playing a wolf. He was shooting out in the street in Pasadena, California, and there was another location crew, scouts, that were there. They were scouting on the streets for another film, and Fox had asked his A.D. what they were filming, and he said, “They are from Spielberg’s company, and they are scouting for this movie called ‘Back to the Future’.” About five weeks later, Fox goes down to Gary David Goldberg’s office, who was the producer on “Family Ties,” and Gary goes behind his desk, picks up an envelope, throws it down and says, “That’s a script of ‘Back to the Future’.” Fox went, “I know the script. They started shooting it like five weeks ago.” Gary responded, “They want to change the actor. Steven wants you to take it home, read it and, if you like it, start shooting next week.” With only a couple of months left of the show, Gary said Fox could make it work if he agreed to do both the show and the movie at the same time. Fox only got three hours of sleep around that time. He would get to work about 10AM, work on the show until about 5PM, then leave and go to Universal, and work there until about 4 or 5AM, then go back home. Fox was only 24 years old and had an amazing time. This was the highest grossing movie of 1985, and the second was “Teen Wolf.”
If you haven’t seen this movie, you are definitely missing out. You should not be reading this review and instead just go out and watch the movie. This is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I love it. I “highly” recommend all of you to go out and find this movie because you should definitely give it a watch. Especially with great lines like, “Great Scott,” “This is heavy,” “1.21 GIGAWATTS,” “I’m George, George McFly. I am your density. I mean, I am your destiny,” “What are you looking at, butthead,” “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads,” and my personal favorite, “If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.”
How do the sequels hold up? Stay tuned next week to find out in my review on the “Back to the Future Trilogy.”
Excellent, awesome review. I loved it also. It is so funny, emotional, exciting, Original, and has a great score. You are right it is very quotable.
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