Back to the Future – Flashback Movie Review
I have noticed lately that a lot of the people I knew as a child and a teenager have been trying to rekindle friendships with me. It took me a while to realise why. I just turned 30, and so did they. Now, I understand that a big part of hitting a milestone birthday is to look back over your life and re-evaluate the things that you should have cared about more or less. For these people in my past it must be that they finally recognize how awesome I always was. But when I turned 30, I didn’t look back to these people. I looked back to the movies and TV shows in my past. As much as we don’t like to admit it, movies and TV change us. What we choose to watch shapes our personalities to directly influence the way we talk, walk, stand, dress, brush our hair, and even the way we judge the world around us. Growing up, getting used to the real world in which the good guys don’t always win, and where amazing things don’t happen all the time, was hard to get used to for someone who was enthralled by film like me. Everything never seemed to work out somehow like in the movies. At one time I thought my life might play out like a movie, but that’s not the way it works. So you take what comes at you and you deal with the real world. But while I came to terms with reality, I also became more immersed in film culture. Over time it became an obsession that I still enjoy today. It hurts no one and I learned a lot from movies. They have made me who am today. An unrepentant movie nerd.
But even before I was a rabid fan of movie culture I still had favorite movies. That is why I am starting a new review project. I am going to re-watch the movies I enjoyed as a kid and write reviews based on what I liked about them then, and what has changed since. This should be an interesting journey. Maybe by looking at what I experienced through movies will help to figure out how I have changed. It is only by looking at where we’ve been do we see where we are going. I’m not normally that philosophical.
Doc and Marty, a great pair and also great shoes... Doc Martin's? geddit?
The first movie I want to look at is a great one about looking to the past and also it’s the one that started my obsession with movies. When I was 4 and a half years old, my parents took me to the local Village Twin Cinema (which regretfully closed in 1996 and the building was used to house an Assemblies Of Christ church for a while) to see a movie that would change the course of my life. I will explain why in a minute, but let’s talk about the movie first. The movie was a 1985 comedy sci-fi masterpiece written by Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis. Zemeckis also directed this massively successful time travel adventure and it’s two sequels. I am of course talking about Back To The Future.
For the uninitiated, Back To The Future is the story of a teenage boy named Marty McFly who is friends with the towns crackpot scientist Doc Brown. Doc Brown has made a time machine out of a DeLorean DMC-12. When this car has plutonium inside it and it gets up to 88 miles per hour it will travel to whenever you want. Right after the Doc shows how the car works, Marty accidentally ends up in 1955 and inadvertently stops his parents from falling in love. Now Marty is stuck in the past and has to get his parents back together so he can continue to exist, while also trying to figure out how to get home. How will Marty survive ‘55? You’ll have to watch it to find out.
when green screens go bad....
Why did I love this movie so much? When I was a kid, my sister used to watch this movie every single day for about two years. I am not exaggerating. I would come home from school and it would have just started. So I have seen this movie at least 700 times. I know it back to front. I can quote not just all the lines, but I know the timing of every sound effect. I am confident that if they ever do discover time travel, I could go back and make this movie exactly the way it exists now. Now, you might think that I am bored by it. Not at all. I still watch it at least twice a year. I love it just as much now as when I first saw it. As a kid I liked it because it was so exciting and fun. I love it now because I know one day when I have kids I will be able to show it to them.
It is difficult to talk about BTTF. You’ve all seen it. What can I say that hasn’t already been said about BTTF? The script is still considered one of the tightest ever written, affectionately referred to on the Universal lot as “The Clock” not because of it’s time travel theme, but because of the precision of a script that is like clockwork. That script gets quoted continuously. Go on, admit it. You’ve said “Hello McFly!” at least 20 times this year already, and most probably at yourself for something stupid you’ve done. In the last season of Family Guy I counted at least 8 different references to BTTF. This movie is so beloved that on flickchart.com the most discussed topic since the site started has always been “Back To The Future vs Ghostbusters”. When novelist Matthew Reilly made his first big paycheck the first thing he bought was a DeLorean. Comedian Ross Noble refers to it in almost every show he does and still says it is the movie he loves more than any other. Actor Tom Wilson, who played Biff Tannen in the BTTF trilogy still has people call him Biff on a daily basis, even though he hasn’t played the character in almost 20 years, and no matter how many things you see Christopher Lloyd in, he will always be Doc Brown.
These are some of my favourite lines: “Last night, Darth Vader came down from planet Vulcan and told me that if I didn’t take Lorraine out, that he’d melt my brain.”
“Who the hell is John F. Kennedy?”
“Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”
If by some miraculous accident you have not seen this movie, go and buy the trilogy on DVD. There’s no time like the present. Please enjoy.
Purchase Now – Help (Cool) Shite
Trailer
This is the first in a series of articles by Kris, please feedback and let him know how much you love Back to the Future, or if you don’t! (though if you don’t then what the hell is up with you?!) feedback and let us know all about it! Unless…. you’re chicken?
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