BACK TO THE FUTURE
dir: Robert Zemeckis
Who the hell is John F. Kennedy? - Sam Baines
Brief Synopsis
Slacker Marty uses Doc Brown's time-traveling car to go back to 1955 where he must fix the vehicle while fixing his parents relationship to ensure he is born.
Why It's Here
A time-traveling story that doesn't complicate itself with questions of dimensions and time paradoxes. A reason why the 80's was great and why Back to the Future is a perfect example of that. Using the rather complicated story element of time-travel but giving it a light-hearted charm with simplified explanations for pretty much everything, Back to the Future is smart, but doesn't require you to think much to get it.
The best part of the entire thing is Christopher Lloyd's crazy scientist Doctor Brown. His antics and expressions remind me of later TV show character Kramer from Seinfeld of course. Brown is hilariously over the top, his contraptions are ridiculous and he is even mad enough to send a dumbfounded dog into the future before anyone else. Animal rights activists cringe at the thought. The man is even mad enough to deal with (and backstab) international terrorists for his time machine, what a guy! But it's Marty that makes the most out of the machine, as he travels back in time to have awkward sexual encounters with the teenage version of his mother, and befriends his dad. A picture of Marty and his siblings symbolizes a timer telling Marty how much time he has until his future is written out of history. The movie acts on numerous timers where nearly every important situation is put in suspense by numerous unfortunate events. The scene where Marty has to drive the Delorean in to the wire when the lightning hits, something's just weren't meant to be! If you watch that scene, just look at how many things go wrong. Talk about suspense, it's not like there could be just one problem to build tension, Zemeckis and his crazy writers through obstacles every few seconds. I'm pretty sure there were at least six major complications in just that one scene. Time is a bitch!
The movie is pretty innocent and light-hearted entertainment. And entertain it does. The script re-uses numerous lines of dialogue from the future and puts it back in the past, characters encounter the exact same situations, showing that they haven't changed at all, which is Marty's unintentional job to change them (ie. make his dad stand up for himself). Well, at least it makes it an easy job for the writers, and the repetition is pretty in-your-face, but it has it's own unique charm.
Speaking of the film being innocent, what's greatest about it is how it lives by the standards of the 80's. No political correct spins on it at all. I watched this movie growing up and it hasn't twisted me into an evil person. The common usage of "son of a bitch" and "bastard" as well as sexual conflicts, and don't forget international terrorists shooting the Doc in cold blood with a fucking AK-47! Now that is the PG quality entertainment that I remember, try finding that today. And that is why Back to the Future makes the top 200.
The best part of the entire thing is Christopher Lloyd's crazy scientist Doctor Brown. His antics and expressions remind me of later TV show character Kramer from Seinfeld of course. Brown is hilariously over the top, his contraptions are ridiculous and he is even mad enough to send a dumbfounded dog into the future before anyone else. Animal rights activists cringe at the thought. The man is even mad enough to deal with (and backstab) international terrorists for his time machine, what a guy! But it's Marty that makes the most out of the machine, as he travels back in time to have awkward sexual encounters with the teenage version of his mother, and befriends his dad. A picture of Marty and his siblings symbolizes a timer telling Marty how much time he has until his future is written out of history. The movie acts on numerous timers where nearly every important situation is put in suspense by numerous unfortunate events. The scene where Marty has to drive the Delorean in to the wire when the lightning hits, something's just weren't meant to be! If you watch that scene, just look at how many things go wrong. Talk about suspense, it's not like there could be just one problem to build tension, Zemeckis and his crazy writers through obstacles every few seconds. I'm pretty sure there were at least six major complications in just that one scene. Time is a bitch!
The movie is pretty innocent and light-hearted entertainment. And entertain it does. The script re-uses numerous lines of dialogue from the future and puts it back in the past, characters encounter the exact same situations, showing that they haven't changed at all, which is Marty's unintentional job to change them (ie. make his dad stand up for himself). Well, at least it makes it an easy job for the writers, and the repetition is pretty in-your-face, but it has it's own unique charm.
Speaking of the film being innocent, what's greatest about it is how it lives by the standards of the 80's. No political correct spins on it at all. I watched this movie growing up and it hasn't twisted me into an evil person. The common usage of "son of a bitch" and "bastard" as well as sexual conflicts, and don't forget international terrorists shooting the Doc in cold blood with a fucking AK-47! Now that is the PG quality entertainment that I remember, try finding that today. And that is why Back to the Future makes the top 200.
Lesson Learned
Extremely typical "put your mind to it and you can achieve anything" lesson. Stand up for yourself, don't let people push you around, your life will be flawless when your older because of it. Yeah, okay the writing isn't that deep, but it's entertaining as hell.
Memorable Moment
When Marty has the awkward dinner with his teenage mother and her family (including the baby version of his convict uncle who loved being behind bars as a child). Marty tells the family he has two televisions, the mother laughs at how ridiculous that "joke" is. Marty exclaims how classic the re-run is on TV, the kid across the table says "what's a re-run?" And finally, the question of "you look familiar, do I know your mother?" Marty peaks over at his mother beside him, "yeah, I think you do."