Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Back to the Future (1985)

So since I'm getting closer to 600 reviews, there is a little something that I haven't gotten to. You see there was a part of my mind that wanted to review the Back to the Future and Indiana Jones films shortly after completing the whole best picture winner reviewing marathon with The Godfather Part II as my 500th review. I ended up focusing on completely other stuff instead, even forgetting about it a few times. But since I'm nearly reaching the 600s, I think it's time I finally settled the matter of re-watching these two franchises and telling my thoughts about them. With that said, let's take a look at the Back to the Future movies.

Plot: Set in 1985, Marty Mcfly is a high school musician wanting to make something of himself, while living with his less ambitious family where his father is bullied by his supervisor Biff and his mother is an overweight alcoholic. But then one night, he sneaks out to see his scientist friend Emmet "Doc" Brown who reveals that he can created a time machine out of a DeLorean car. But during this discovery, Doc is found and killed by Libyan terrorists who he stole plutonium from in order to power the time machine, and so Marty accidentally travels in time with the DeLorean while driving away from the Libyans to the year 1955. There he tries to find the Doc from that year to find a way to get back in time, but he finds out that he also has to find a way for his teenager parents-to-be to get together as the teenage version of his mom has the hots for him.

I"m going to start of by expressing my opinion with these films as a whole, by saying that the Back to the Future films in my mind are the right movies to watch to introduce people to the general concept of time travel. There are several other films and TV episodes that give us time travel and in some cases like Doctor Who, have their own different set of rules and experiences with this concept. But it's the Back to the Future films that I think introduce it better with its cleverly detailed world of this town of Hill Valley, the problems and consequences with tame travel that Marty and Doc encounter, its all around unique way to travel through time and all with their likable characters. Watching this movie again, I re-realized how much detail they put into this movie with how this are both similar and different between 1955 and 1985 and how both moments in time connect. How you can compare and contrast to what Marty's parents and other people from around both years where like during both of those times. Almost anything that they tell you about the people, or the town is relevant to the story, and they make the differences of both time eras work. But part of what keeps the film interesting is the main characters, Marty and the Doc. Marty I enjoyed watching when I first saw this film almost as soon as I found out that he is played by Michael J. Fox, who also plays Milo Thatch in Atlantis: The Lost Empire, a film I was practically obsessed with at the time. And even with that said, Marty is a fun, heroic character to watch. Even if he's not an expert with time like Doc is, he still will try to come up with ideas to try to fix things up and will be on his feet in a sense when he's coming across enemies like Biff and his gang. Though I do remember these films introducing me to some swear words that I almost never heard of until my siblings and I started watching them, and I do think I have to give credit mainly to Marty for that. The Doc is also a very fun character that Christopher Loyd did a great job in giving the majority of the exposition for traveling through time and the consequences. And finally, it was an all around fun, funny and in some respects, suspenseful movie. A good portion of what helped made this movie suspenseful and fun was the music. The original score just gives a very fun and adventurous feel to the movie that really sets the emotion of what is happening. Also "Power of Love" and "Johnnie B. Goode" are very fun songs to listen to...even if with the latter song, you can tell that Michael J. Fox is lip-syncing to the song.

And that's my review for Back to the Future. It's a fun, clever and very well constructed time travel film with likable main characters, an enjoyable score, and is altogether an enjoyable adventure that shouldn't be forgotten. If you haven't seen this movie yet, it's definitely worth taking a look.

Rating: 95%        

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