Marty McFly: Calvin? Wh... Why do you keep calling me Calvin?
Lorraine Baines: Well, that is your name, isn't it? Calvin Klein? It's written all over your underwear.

It’s one thing to have your mother lay out your clothes and even your underwear. It’s another thing to meet your mother when she was a teenager and is smitten by your purple underwear. This could seriously scar a person for life, even if it does happen 30 years before you were born. Years of therapy will not help at all.

Marty McFly discovers how creepy this situation is when he encounters his parents as teenagers, all thanks to a time-traveling DeLorean. But because of his sudden appearance into the past, he endangers his future; his own mother has the “hots” for him instead of his father. This dilemma has to be rectified quickly before Marty is completely wiped out from existence.

Just chalk it up as another teenage problem in Back to the Future, a 1985 film directed by Robert Zemeckis and produced by Steven Spielberg. This one is easy compared to bullies, girls, relationships, love, Flux Capacitors and 1.21 gigawatts of power. Even dealing with Libyan terrorists seems like a walk in the park.

Luckily for Marty, he has the venerable (in Marty’s eyes… eccentric to all others) Emmett “Doc” Brown to help him out. After all, it’s Doc’s time machine that gets Marty into trouble in the first place. Welcome to 1955, Marty McFly. It’s time to get back to your own time in 1985.

Back to the Future hits all the right notes with this movie, especially with the cast of Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd as Marty McFly and Doc Brown. The chemistry displayed between these two is unbelievable with the smarty-written dialogue at their disposal. If they didn’t make it work, this film would have failed. A lot of it has to do with Fox’s charm. I don’t think another actor would have pulled off what he did, thanks largely due to his wonderful comedic timing. And playing off Christopher Lloyd only makes their screen time together much more enjoyable.

Many themes are offered up in this movie, especially the one where parents seem to be from another planet. At least that’s what all teenagers think. They believe grown-ups don’t have any idea what it’s like to be them and, to a degree, they may be correct. It’s hard to imagine that parents were once teenagers.

Dr. Emmett Brown: Well, they're your parents you must know them. What are their common interests? What do they like to do together?
Marty McFly: Nothing.

The inclusion of Lea Thompson (Lorraine Baines/McFly), Crispin Glover (George McFly) and Thomas F. Wilson (Biff Tannen) really help round up the casting. All of them give excellent performances in their respective roles. I particularly enjoy Glover’s neurotic George McFly, the one character I can easily identify with (he reads comic books). But Wilson definitely plays the imposing bully to perfection. There is no choice but to love to hate the character, and hope he gets what he deserves.

The humour is priceless, but it’s touched with some human elements that make it touching. No one in their right mind cannot help but give a silent cheer when Biff Tannen crashes his car into a pile of manure. Okay, there’s no need to be silent about that. It’s still funny after all these years. Manure jokes never get old.

It also helps that the film is very kinetic in nature. It has to be in order for the story to be told without making it boring at all. The rapid interchanging scenes near the end of the film as Doc tries to send Marty home is nerve wrecking, even to this day. No matter how many times I have seen it, no matter how many times I know what that outcome will be, I still get a huge adrenaline rush that keeps me at he edge of my seat. I keep thinking that one day it might turn out differently, and sigh in relief when things work out yet again.

The 1980s really saw an influx of some amazing teen movies, such as The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Risky Business to name a few. Back to the Future can easily fall into that category, but I also believe it transcends it as well. There is something uniquely special about this project where all the stars were aligned in the right place and time. It’s a science-fiction/comedy/teen movie that really investigates the relationships between parents and children in such a roundabout way. In the end, it would be nice to see where and how we inherited our traits, and to find out that we are not that different from our parents. Or, in other words, they are not aliens and we are not adopted. As Marty McFly would say, “Whoa, this is heavy.”


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**This is part of CopeSullivan's 50 Reviews By Halloween Write-Off. This is 27 out of 50. Where I'm going, I don't need roads. I need a miracle.

***This is also part of captaind's The Good Movies Write-Off.






Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for Groups
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12