Review: Back to the Future (Robert Zemeckis, 1985)

As you probably could've guessed from my username, Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future is one of those very special and rare movies that I would defend vehemently. One of the most inventive, adrenaline-pumping, amusing and eye-popping movies of all time, and one that's completely devoid of pretension, pomposity and self-consciousness, Back to the Future is a film that never fails to leave me feeling like I'm on Cloud Nine. Here's why.
The year is 1985. Rebellious Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox, a last-minute replacement for Eric Stoltz, who failed to exude the laidback charm Zemeckis wanted the character to have) lives in the quaint (and fictional) Californian town of Hill Valley, where he has a beautiful and supportive girlfriend named Jennifer (played by Claudia Wells). Marty despairs of his alcoholic mother Lorraine and pushover father George (Lea Thompson and Crispin Glover) and thus spends most of his time hanging out with Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd), a goofball scientist who, as it turns out, has just invented a DeLorean time machine (the time machine originally was intended to be a refrigerator, but Zemeckis changed it to a car because he worried that after seeing Marty walk through a refrigerator kids would follow suit). During a test run, however, Marty is accidentally sent back to 1955. Now, whilst trying to get back to the future, he encounters run-ins with his father's lifelong bully Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson) and must somehow make sure his parents-to-be meet and fall in love – which is not as easy it sounds when Lorraine falls head over heels in love with him.
There is no department that makes a false move on this film. Firstly, the cast dynamic is flawless: Fox's Everyman affability has never been put to better use, Lloyd enjoys what is unquestionably the defining role of his career as the nutty scientist, Thompson and Glover revel in playing Marty's parents as teenagers and adults in middle-age, and Wilson brings menace and later even a little accurate lowliness to his role as the pathetic bully who finally gets his comeuppance. Technically, Back to the Future has aged like wine as well: the art direction is effective in its subtlety and accuracy to '50s culture, the editing is swift, but not to an extent that you can't make out everything that's happening on-screen, and although there aren't as many of them as you'd think given the type of film this is, the special effects are still superb by today's standards. Alan Silvestri's jazzy, electronic score is yet another element that raises the excitement enormously.
But at the end of the day, this really is Bob Zemeckis' show. Firstly he and Bob Gale co-wrote an ingenious screenplay so bursting with invention and peppered with sparkling humour (see the 1955 dinner scene, most notably) and heart that the years have done nothing to lessen the sense of wonder it brings. Secondly, his direction of Back to the Future is perfectly executed, especially for a blockbuster (and even I must admit to having a love/hate relationship with blockbusters sometimes): Zemeckis' directorial effort here is energetic, slick, cunning and fast-paced in the action scenes and cleverly subtle in the slower moments, his passion for the story apparent in every frame. Michael Bay and Roland Emmerich, leave the blockbusters to the true masters and stop embarrassing yourselves.

Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future, one of the highest-grossing films of the '80s and a film that continues to have a huge impact on popular culture and film-making to this day, is a spectacular blockbuster that flawlessly combines dazzling and incredibly exciting action sequences with a sweet thematic centre that never ventures into cheesy territory, all the while being laced with wickedly funny humour. It's a film that, like very few of its contemporaries, has managed to avoid developing a negative reputation due to its large-scale success and continues to enchant new legions of young movie fans as well as remaining an all-time favourite of many older movie fans, and it will continue to do that for many years to come.