Back to the Future Movie Review

Back to the Future (1985)

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Written by: Robert Zemeckis, Bob Gale
Directed by: Robert Zemeckis
Starring: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover
Rated: PG
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Plot
After traveling to the past in a Delorean, Marty McFly has to ensure his parents fall in love to protect his own existence.

Verdict
It deftly weaves concurrent story lines so effortlessly. The writing is clever and fun. What if you could meet your parents when they were young? What if man could travel through time? What if your existence depended on helping your parents fall in love? They don't make them like they used to, with action, suspense, tension, and even romance, you have to see this movie or watch it again.
Watch It.

Review
It's a slow start, but it's setting up a lot of points the movie revisits later. If you haven't seen it before, you don't know what objects and points will be revisited later. It does such a great job of setting up the eventual payoffs. Marty's mom lectures him about how things used to be in her day, and Marty gets to see it first hand. It's not like she described. The script is so clever that it's baffling to learn it was rejected nearly forty times, though it did go through many revisions. The inspiration for the script came when Bob Gale saw his father's high school year book and wondered if they would have been friends.

Michael J. Fox is perfect as Marty McFly, and while he was always the first choice, his starring role in Family Ties almost prevented him from being in the movie. Many scenes were shot with Eric Stoltz as McFly. Stoltz and the producers agreed he wasn't a good fit, so Michael J. Fox filmed Family Ties and Back to the Future concurrently.

Christopher Lloyd, Michael J. Fox play Doc Brown, Marty McFly

Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) seems like a crack pot scientist until his time travel experiment works. The Delorean leaving flaming tire tracks is an iconic moment. As Brown says, if you're going to time travel, do it in style.

The plot is ingenious. It packages time travel as a simple way to improve the future with no ill effects. It's not true. Time is a closed loop and can't be altered, but it doesn't matter and the fallacy creates a fun movie. The movie glosses over the impacts of changing the future, even if such a thing were possible.

Marty accidentally travels thirty years into the past and has to convince a younger Doc Brown to help him get "back to the future." In the process, Marty meets his parents. He gets to see that his dad was bullied as a teen, just as he is as an adult. His mom was much prettier and more forward with boys. His parents' meet cute story was more complicated than he knew, and Marty ends up preventing them from meeting which puts his own existence into jeopardy.

Marty has to help his father overcome anxiety, fall in love with his mom, and triumph over local bully Biff. This is the same Biff that still bullies his father in 1985.

All of these stories come together to a point as Marty is trying to get back to 1985. It's an amazing moment of tension as you wonder whether he can save himself, and then whether the plan to harness the power of lighting will work. The script is so well executed, and I can't help but think Back to the Future when I hear Huey Lewis's The Power of Love.