Flashback movie review (1985): ‘Back to the Future’
Editor’s note: This review was originally published on July 5, 1985.
Consider the plight of poor Marty McFly. It seems an unwritten law that all teenagers are embarrassed by their parents, and Marty (Michael J. Fox) is no exception. He glances over at his too-nice, bespectacled, milquetoast-type father and his weary, overweight, tipsy mother, and he is nudged into silent despair - even anger.
Sure, they are his parents, and he loves them. But they are such a nerdy pair that in his teenage mind, he can't understand how he could be in the same family. Somebody must have switched kids at the hospital, right? Like all cool youths, he can't even imagine what Mom and Dad must have been like as teens themselves. What's worse, he's not sure he wants to try.
But when Marty is spun back 30 years to 1955 through a quirky accident involving a time machine invented by a wild-eyed, eccentric neighbor (Christopher Lloyd), the youth comes face to face - hilariously and poignantly - with his heritage and his destiny.
He pops into the past and is stunned to see his 17-year-old future father (Crispin Glover) trying to keep the peace by caving in to outrageous demands of the class bully. He is even more astonished to stumble across the pretty, flirtatious young woman (Lea Thompson) who will become his mother - if, that is, his appearance hasn't upset the time and space continuum.
Marty's unexpected, literally out-of-the-blue arrival interrupts his future parents' first meeting, and if he can't get them together and back on the track, he agonizes that he just might cease to exist - or, rather, never have existed. ''Back to the Future" - from director Robert Zemeckis, who cowrote the screenplay with Bob Gale - is more than a science fiction fantasy for the ever-profitable teenage audience. Instead, it is both a nostalgia treat for older audiences, particularly those who remember the 1950s, and a frantically funny what-if about changing the past and disrupting the future. Who's to say that all changes are necessarily bad?
The possibilities make "Back to the Future" one of the most exhilarating "uppers" in the movie houses this summer.
Zemeckis, who crafted last year's stylish "Romancing the Stone," again achieves a good balance of action to reflection. Like his executive producer, Steven Spielberg, Zemeckis often borders on the too-violent in setting up scenes. But his skill at resolving situations, often with a dollop of outrageous humor, pulls the scenes back into palatable territory.
Michael J. Fox, familiar from TV's "Family Ties," is a fast-talking bundle of energy as Marty who displays some of the same physical comedy skills as a young Bill Murray. He is a frantic schemer who, seemingly, can change gears in midshift when his plans start going awry.
Lea Thompson and Crispin Glover do double duty as Marty's parents, both as teenagers and adults. Obviously closer in age to the former, they are at their ingenuous, engaging best as the mismatched Romeo and Juliet of 1955, although their scenes as middle-aged adults work because of their brevity.
But it is Christopher Lloyd, another veteran TV actor familiar as Rev. Jim of "Taxi," who gives a showcase performance as the eccentric time machine inventor. Lloyd seems to be somewhere between a spaced-out Einstein and sewer savant Ed Norton of the old "Honeymooners." Whenever he is on- screen, he is all over it. We wouldn't have it any other way.
This story was originally published July 2, 2015 at 5:51 PM with the headline "Flashback movie review (1985): ‘Back to the Future’."