ManWithPez

Presenting the world's coolest pine tree killer, ever!

Or, at least it should be.  That’s right, today, in fictional history back in 1955 Doctor Emmett Brown invented the Flux Capacitor, which is what makes time travel, and one of your better science fiction films, Back to the Future, possible!

I’m not going to go into this one in great detail except to say that this is one of the best films ever!   Never mind the genre!  It’s got a great cast, cool effects, a kickass car, and the last ten minutes are, hands down, one of the best combinations of editing, music, and action to ever grace a movie screen!

Martin McFly(Michael J Fox) just wants to be seen as someone…ANYONE!  He feels a standout kind of guy, but never seems to find his way.  He’s constantly late for things, his best friend is an old quack scientist Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd), his mother Lorraine (Lea Thompson) is an alcoholic, his sister’s a floozy, his brother works at Burger King, and his father George (Crispin Glover) is in eternal servitude to a high school bully that just won’t let go, Biff Tannen (Thomas Wilson).  He has a hot girlfriend, but his band just doesn’t seem to be taking off.  All of that will change (though not paradoxically) when Doc Brown converts a DeLorean into a time machine!

One aspect of this film I like is that functionally, it works.  There’s time changing in the past, but you don’t really run into any paradoxes like you will with the sequel (more on that later).  They took the time to make a really cool looking time machine as well, as I believe in the original script, the time machine is a refrigerator.  Michael J. Fox plays Marty as a likable everyman who is thrust into an unbelievable situation, and managed to turn the character into one of popular media’s best of all time!  Christopher Lloyd here turns in his best perfomance ever(though I am a fan of his Professor Plum) and almost steals the entire show!  Crispin Glover is likeably weird(for once), and Lea Thompson…well, that one’s a little strange for me, as young Lorraine bears a more than striking resemblance to my grandmother when she was that age.

This movie has a great story whose plot never stops moving, once Marty accidentally replaces his father at a crucial moment.  To save his, and his entire family’s existence, he has to set things right, which turns out harder to do than advertised thanks to Biff and Marty’s own parent’s strange teenage quirks (which, oddly enough, aren’t far removed from his own.)  But, for me, the highlight of this movie is the last action scene where Marty has to race a bolt of lightning (1.21 JIGAWATTS?!  GREAT SCOTT!) to get back to 1985.  Switching between Marty’s and Doc Brown’s troubles in this scene is nothing short of genius, and still, to this day, and several dozen viewings, has me on the edge of my seat and ready to cheer the outcome, or hate the loss!

I can’t say much about this movie that hasn’t been said already.  It is my favorite science fiction film ever, contains my favorite movie hero of all time (Honestly, Marty gets hardship after hardship and always comes out on top, because, after all, as Doc Brown says in the sequel “We must succeed.”)  It’s filled with amazing quotes and action scenes, has a fulfilling, if ambiguous ending, and definitely leaves you wanting more.  Which we will get around to this month, now that I’ve announced why so many time travel movie reviews in November.

So, remember November 5th, 1955 and keep it holy!  Also, you will need to hit 88mph to get to the next review, Future Boy!

Tags: Review, Science Fiction

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 5:03 pm and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.