OUTATIME

Back to the Future (1985)

Rated: PG

Runtime: 116 minutes

Stars: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Crispin Glover, Lea Thompson, Thomas F. Wilson

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Awards: Won: (Best Effects/Sound Effects Editing) Nominated: (Best Writing/Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, Best Music/Original Song, Best Sound)

Plot: Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is your typical ‘80s teenager; he rides a skateboard, plays guitar in a band named The Pinheads (they are just too darn loud), has a girlfriend that believes in him, is always late for school, wants a black 4x4, and his choice of beverage is anything without sugar. Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) is a scientist/inventor, is Marty’s best friend, and has a dog named Einstein. George McFly (Crispin Glover) and Lorraine Baines McFly (Lea Thompson) are Marty’s parents; George still gets pushed around by his high school bully Biff, likes peanut brittle and The Honeymooners, and isn’t good at confrontations; Lorraine has never chased a boy or called a boy or sat in a parked car with a boy, and she likes vodka. Oh, and Biff, (Thomas F. Wilson) he sleeps in on Saturdays and Sundays. Doc Brown has built a time machine out of a DeLorean and has plans to travel 25 years into the future. Some Libyan terrorists out for revenge after getting swindled for their plutonium cause a chain of events that send Marty back in time to the year 1955. After reuniting with 1955 Doc, Marty and Doc encounter all sorts of trouble while trying to get Marty back to the year 1985. This includes Marty bumping into his parents and Biff and causing his future to be in jeopardy.

Rating—out of 5 basketballs: 5

Tournament seed: 1—one of the top 4 teams in the tournament. Has played at a high level all season and is deserving of its “easier” path to the final 4. Most people pick 1-seeds to advance far into the tournament, and they are most likely to win the championship.

I told you it was going to happen. It’s October 26^th, the day that Marty McFly traveled back in time. So a Salty Chewbacca review of his favorite movie of all time only seems appropriate. I know I may have said in my June 16^th review of Before Sunrise that it was my favorite movie of all time, but I go back and forth on these 2 movies. If I had to choose, it would be Back to the Future (1), and Before Sunrise (1A). But it’s so close. I would even go so far as to say that Back to the Future is in the top 2 or 3 of the 10 movies you have to see from the ‘80s … I will come up with that top 10 in the next few days and post it in the comments. There is so much to cover in this movie, so I will start with the easy stuff and go from there.

The music/score is amazing. My girlfriend has said that the movie theme is the greatest of all time, and she is pretty cool so it has to be true. The score throughout is absolutely perfect; every scene that calls for emotion or excitement delivers that and more. Then there is Huey Lewis’s “Power of Love”; it should be on everyone’s Walkman … I mean … what year are we in? What do kids use these days? iPods? Whatever … the song is awesome! There are several classic lines from the film that are still used today, or should be anyway: “Save the clock tower”, “What are you looking at, butthead?”, “Say hi to your mom for me”, “Let’s see if you bastards can do 90”, “Who the hell is John F. Kennedy?”, “Great Scott!”, “What the hell is a gigawatt?”, “Make like a tree and get outta here”, “Lou, give me a milk … chocolate”, “Dad … dad … dad … daddio”, “Hey you, get your damn hands off her”, “I don’t want to mess with no reefer addicts”, and “I guess you guys aren’t ready for that … but your kids are gonna love it”. Some important things are learned when you go back to the year 1955; orange vests may be cool in 1985 but can cause people in 1955 to think you are in the Coast Guard, and if you owned 2 TV’s in 1955 you would be rich. Ok now onto the plot. The story is so tightly written that it was able to leave itself open for a sequel (or two) without ever losing grip on what it was accomplishing in this movie, which could have easily stood on its own. Simple things are mentioned in the beginning, like the clock tower being struck by lightning in 1955 or George and Lorraine going to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance together and kissing for the very first time on the dance floor. You don’t even realize it, but the movie is telling you that everything that led to the current McFly family existence was all relying on unusual/amazing events that had to happen in 1955. Good thing nothing ever threatened to keep these things from happening …

Like, what if Doc hadn’t slipped and banged his head and come up with the flux capacitor, which is what makes time travel possible? I don’t even want to think about it! But it does happen, and 30 years later Doc gets some plutonium, which is what is required to generate the 1.21 gigawatts needed to power the flux capacitor, but then he gets shot by some Libyan terrorists, and Marty, in an attempt to escape the same fate, jumps in the DeLorean and accidentally travels back to November 5, 1955. Innocently, at first, Marty encounters teenage George and Biff at Lou’s café, but then gets hit by the car driven by his grandfather, which was supposed to hit George and set up the falling in love between Marty’s parents. Are you still following me? Good, because I am going to keep going. Marty wakes up to see teenage Lorraine who, get this, is HOT! Marty isn’t wearing his pants, which causes Lorraine to call Marty “Calvin” because it is written all over his underwear. If I had a nickel for every time my mom caught me with my pants down, I would have a nickel. Marty then meets up with 1955 Doc but has a hard time convincing him that he is from the future, but a story about a flux capacitor clears that up, because November 5, 1955 is the day Doc came up with the idea for the flux capacitor and how would Marty know about that? Now with Doc on his side, Marty has to get back to 1985, but plutonium is hard to come by and the only thing capable of producing the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity is a bolt of lightning, but you don’t know when or where it will strike … wait, yes we do; the clock tower! See I told you the writing was tight.

So now all Marty has to do is hang out for a week until the storm, and then he can go back, but Doc says no because it could change the future, but Marty kind of already did that when he bumped into his parents. And it is evident when Marty’s brother’s and sister’s images begin to fade from a photo in Marty’s wallet. Uh-oh … but Doc says they just have to get George and Lorraine together and they will fall in love. Simple. Or so they think … George seems too interested in writing a sci-fi story about visitors coming down to earth from other planets, and Biff’s aggressiveness towards Lorraine could become an issue. But Marty stands up to Biff, and then “Darth Vader from the planet Vulcan” visits George and convinces him to ask Lorraine to the dance. Ok, things seem to be back on track. George drops a sweet line to Lorraine: “I’m your density”, but Marty’s invention of the skateboard and Biff crashing into a manure truck distract Lorraine. Doc builds a model of the town but doesn’t have time to build it to scale or paint it, but its use is to show Marty the plan to get him back to 1985. Doc will run a cable from the clock tower to the lamp posts and have a pole and hook attached to the flux capacitor; once the car reaches 88 mph and lightning hits the cable, the hook will make contact and generate the 1.21 gigawatts and Marty will be back in 1985. The simulation causes the model car to catch fire, but Doc isn’t worried; he will take care of the lightning and Marty just has to take care of his pop … oh right back to George and Lorraine.

Lorraine wants Marty to ask her to the Enchantment Under the Sea dance; you know, the one where George and Lorraine are supposed to kiss for the very first time. Marty and George come up with a plan to have George rescue Lorraine, so Marty turns his attention to warning Doc about the night in 1985 where he gets shot, but Doc won’t listen. So Marty writes Doc a letter and puts it in Doc’s jacket. Marty and Lorraine arrive at the dance and decide to park for a while. Lorraine drink and smokes, but that doesn’t stop Marty from having “thoughts” about his mom … I will leave this part up to your imagination … Back to the dance. Marvin Berry and the Starlighters is the band playing at the dance, and Biff is out for revenge against Marty for causing $300 damage to his car; he’s going to take it out of his ass. But Biff decides he wants to rape Lorraine first, so Biff’s gang throws Marty in the trunk of Marvin Berry’s car, which is unfortunate because that’s where the keys are. How is Marty going to save Lorraine? Cue George at the car where he is expecting Marty with Lorraine, but he finds Biff instead. George stands up to Biff and knocks him out with one punch. Marvin slices his hand opening the trunk to get Marty out. Now the dance is in jeopardy, unless someone else can play guitar. If only … we do know someone that plays the guitar! Just when you think all is lost it finds a way to continue being awesome.

Marty plays the guitar while the band performs “Earth Angel” and George, who is popular now, is dancing with Lorraine. With the future still up in the air, Marty begins to fade away. But George kisses Lorraine and Marty springs back, and his brother and sister are back in the picture. With everything going well, Marty is about to leave the dance, but the band wants him to do another song, something that “really cooks”. So Marty suggests a “blues riff in B, watch me for the changes, and try to keep up” and starts playing an “oldie where he comes from”, which just happens to be “Johnny B. Goode”. The kids love it, even Marvin, which causes him to call his cousin Chuck Berry so he can listen to that new sound he’s been looking for. Yeah, Marty just created rock-n-roll! Marty duck-walks across the stage and kicks over the amp, causing everyone to stop and stare at him. This is probably a good time for him to leave and meet up with Doc … you know, to go back to 1985 and all.

The storm is coming and Marty is running late. Is this kid ever on time? He finally arrives and starts to say his goodbyes to Doc. Doc finds Marty’s letter and rips it up. A tree branch falls on the cable and it detaches. Doc climbs to the top of the clock tower to reattach it the cable and Marty gets in the DeLorean to drive to the starting point. He then realizes that he can just go back early to warn Doc, so he programs the time circuits 10 minutes earlier to beat the Libyans. Marty you are a genius! You have all the time in the world, you have a time machine. No! The car stalls, Doc slips and is hanging off of the hour hand, and the cable is hanging from the cuff of his pants … Are they going to make it in time before the lightning strikes the clock tower at precisely 10:04 pm? Marty bangs his head on the steering wheel, the car starts and he speeds towards the cable. Meanwhile, Doc connects the cable, slides down, and connects it at the other end, just as the lightning strikes and the hook hits the cable. Marty disappears and Doc does a dance.

Marty is back in 1985, the car stalls again, and the Libyans speed by him. Marty runs to the mall, but it’s too late; the Libyans shoot Doc and he watches “himself” go back in time. Marty thinks he has seen his best friend die for the second time, but Doc blinks and sits up … WHAAAAAT? Doc opens his suit to reveal a bulletproof vest. He pulls out Marty’s letter which is taped back together. Turns out Doc said “What the hell” to the space-time continuum. I wonder if anything else Marty has done will have any other effects on the future. Doc drops Marty off at his house and tells him that he is going to go 30 years into the future. Marty goes to sleep and wakes up the next morning thinking he has just had a nightmare. Oh but it is all real. As he walks out to the kitchen for breakfast he realizes that his house is different, his under-achieving brother is now wearing a suit on his way to the office, and his sister with no social life has a lot of boyfriends. His parents look great and have just come back from a game of tennis, and Biff is waxing the family car. Things are great! But they get better when copies of George’s first novel, A Match Made in Space, arrive in the mail, and Jennifer arrives and wants to go for a ride with Marty in his new black 4x4. They are about to share a kiss and end this long adventure, when Doc crashes the DeLorean (which now runs on trash power instead of plutonium power) into the driveway. Doc tells Marty that he and Jennifer have to go back to the future because their kids are in trouble. Sequel alert!!! Doc backs the car up and … wait for it … the car is now a hover-car, because where they are going they don’t need roads …

So I have just given you an awesome review/running diary of possibly the greatest 116 minutes of movie you will ever see. Speaking of awesome … I enjoyed it all on a Blu-ray copy that was absolutely delicious to watch. You should check it out and relive your childhood, because like Doc is always saying:

Doc: “If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.”