Back to the Future ***** (1985, Michael J Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover) – Classic Movie Review 1933

The popular Family Ties (1982-1989) TV star Michael J Fox vrooms to big screen fame as Marty McFly, a 1985 teenager accidentally whisked back to 1955 in a plutonium-powered DeLorean time-machine car, invented by his friend, Dr Emmett Brown, to play Cupid to his own parents (Crispin Glover, Lea Thompson). Now he has to make certain that his high-school-age parents meet and fall in love in order to get back to the future and save his own existence.

The concept of co-writer/director Robert Zemeckis’s 1985 time-travelling sci-fi comedy adventure Back to the Future is so engaging that there were queues outside every cinema in the world for this trip of a lifetime. It made a fortune and spawned two sequels.

The straightforward time travel comedy story is given a spin by a weird comic hint of incest, when Thompson falls for modern-day teenager Fox. Along with the irresistible story and effortless handling, the delightful ensemble performances but especially from Fox (already 24 but seemingly an eternal teenager), Christopher Lloyd (from TV’s Taxi) as the mad scientist Doc Brown, and a gorgeously goofy Glover, ace special effects by Kevin Pike and Huey Lewis and The News’s catchy song ‘The Power of Love’ are the main keys to its success.

Director Zemeckis gets the tone just right in a joyful iconic Eighties movie, effectively balancing Fifties nostalgia with slapstick comedy and special-effects adventure. Billy Zane makes his debut as Match. There was one Oscar, for best sound effects editing.

On a $19 million cost, it grossed an astonishing $198 million in the US alone. It is still Michael J Fox’s most popular movie three decades later. Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Back to the Future Part III (1990) followed, both directed by Zemeckis.

October 21 2015 is the day Doc and Mary jet off to the future to at the end of the movie.

Christopher Lloyd turned 80 on 22 October 2018.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1933

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com/