1980’s California teenager Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) has a pretty normal life. Drunk mom, airhead dad, nerd siblings, girlfriend who actually seems to care if he’s alive or not, a stack of tardy slips and a rock band that’s just too motherfuckin’ loud. The only thing unusual about his life is his best friend, Emmett "Doc" Brown (Christopher Lloyd), is the smartest man in human history. You see, Doc Brown has invented a time machine. And it works too. As long as you got the 1.21 gigawatts it takes to power that bad boy.
Outside of THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, BACK TO THE FUTURE is my most watched film. I still remember the magic of seeing it for the very first time as a child and being so excited and so stressed out over Marty’s predicament. And then the entire idea of time travel just blew my mind up! Watching it honestly changed my life. And how I looked at the world and the endless possibilities of storytelling. So, that said, as hard as I try to focus my handsome noodle on it, it’s very difficult for me to look at BACK TO THE FUTURE objectively. To me, it’s one of the greatest achievements in movie history. But, since I am the world’s highest paid movie critic, I do need to be realistic about it and understand that younger audiences probably don’t give two womp rat farts about BACK TO THE FUTURE and think it’s a dated piece of shit. I saw BTTF in the theater last month and noticed some middle-aged nerds dragging their kids along. By the time the film was over, the kids look like they wanted to commit ritual suicide, seppuku, with a bamboo sword.
Dated or not, it’s hard to top BACK TO THE FUTURE for pure 1980’s American storytelling. If I had a Happyotter Film School, there would be a class just on the first BACK TO THE FUTURE film. Easily one of the Top 10 Greatest Films ever made.
Part 2 - Back to the Future Part II (1989)
Part 3 - Back to the Future Part III (1990)
