An Eighties Classic

Rating: 10/10 (31 August 2015)

This may not be the best movie of the eighties. But it is the movie that I deem to best represent the cinema and spirit of the decade. If you're wondering, that movie for the fifties is Rebel Without a Cause. For the sixties, it's Planet of the Apes. For the seventies, it's Apocalypse Now. For the nineties, it's the Truman Show. For the 2000s, it's The Dark Knight. For the 2010s, it's... I don't know. The Social Network? Anyways; let's dive in to this film, possibly my favorite true action-comedy of all time. If I want to be entertained for two hours, this is the film I'll pop in. There are two kinds of excellence in film; the kind that appeals to what 'normal people' want in movies and the kind that appeals to those who deal probably deal far too much in the esoteric. While I firmly belong in the second group, I am a film-goer, and as such, I do enjoy the first kind. And no film offers more of the first kind than this one.
The comedy, the action, the tone, the stylings; they're all here. It does not try to be a big, emotional artsy movie. Instead, it just takes you for an enjoyable ride. The eighties did this kind of movie better than any decade. When you think of eighties movies, you likely think of these movies. This is the best one, but the likes of The Goonies, Ghostbusters, Gremlins, and likely any other movie in this decade with the involvement of Steven Spielberg comes to mind.
Not to say that the eighties didn't try to make serious movies too. they just weren't very good at it. If you're interested, look up a list of Best Picture winners. Watching them is a bit weird; they have some eighties stylings but are dead grim and often depressing. It's like watching a film from a different dimension. Some were fine (Terms of Endearment) some were not as good (Out of Africa).
I like the lot of them as a whole better than most. And the ones that people really like (Amadeus, Platoon, etc) that people love, I likely love more. But I will admit that they aren't exactly foremost on most people's eyes. There's a reason that there aren't talks to remake Driving Miss Daisy. And it's not because it's artistic blasphemy. They would remake The Godfather if they thought that it would make them money.
Here's a novel idea: how about I actually discuss Back to the Future? A high school kid named Marty McFly, down in the dumps from his high school life, where he is bullied by Biff Tannen and is under the control of the aptly named Principal Strickland (strangely, growing up, I had an insurance agent with that last name around by neighborhood. It was weird.) His home life isn't much better: his dad is a wimp, his mom is prudish enough to make one shrivel up, and his siblings are layabouts. But his life changes once his friend Doc Brown makes a time machine (2015 here. still waiting for one). As he stole plutonium form Libyan militants, they chase and kill him. While escaping in a DeLorean, Marty transports them back to 1955.
Thus begins the best use of nostalgia for the fifties in an eighties movie I've ever seen. Their cleverness in weaving in it is matched only by what they do with their setting. Where as a lesser movie would just throw up scenery and call it a day, this film uses every opportunity to use its setting for purposes both comedic and dramatic.
Whereas films like Dirty Dancing couldn't even immerse their film completely in one decade (if you're gonna be a fifties movie, don't use an eighties soundtrack), this movie somehow manages to immerse you in two decades. Their version of the fifties is solid and fully fleshed out. It does not use pandering or too many rosey tones but still manages to capture the sensation of time traveling there.
All this is only likely noticed on a third viewing. The first time, you are too immersed in the perfect blend of action and comedy, a trademark of Zemeckis at his best, from Forrest Gump to Who Framed (not Killed, no matter what my brain thinks) Roger Rabbit, as well as in the tight writing. The second time, you are two invested in the characters and one of the best and catchiest soundtracks of the decade. But if you watch this movie as much as I do, you notice that it is there.
What else is there to say? there is a reason that I have such a personal attachment to this film. The only bad thing is that we don't have a time machine that would allow this film to be watched an infinite amount of times without any real time passing. But maybe someday. After all, where we're going, we don't need roads.