What a concept.

Rating: Null/10 (14 October 2010)

MJ Fox is rather grating after your 100th of so film you 've seen in your life, and I don't like this over actor (god bless his soul with the fight he is on) nor the other overactor Llloyd.
But Lea Thompson is something else here, she's so charming, and natural, and expressive...she's something.
This film's success was that it fused too great forces together teen love and lust with the concept of that happening between a boy and a younger version of their mom in the past. Now what's forceful here is not how many guys have fancied their moms, we are talking here symbolically, and in that level there's a taboo (for good reasons) and taboos can be very titillating and exciting (even if you don't subscribe to the literal meaning of the taboo - in your fantasizing subconscious of symbols and apparitions the taboo is still there (not literally with ones mom of course) contrasting such complex internal phenomena as motherhood, care, love, lust).
So in essence this fantasy notion of time travel gives the writers here (in a very unlikely for a Hollywood teen flick profound way) a very inconspicuous way to explore, or to tease rather, the very real forces of taboo, oedipal complexes (though I dislike the term) , our feelings of attachment, lust, love and we also have no worse than too teenagers we can project them on. While that doesn't go anywhere really, nor should it (or could it) necessarily, it keeps a very sensual and exciting aura that spills over the dumb and formulaic scenes that make up the rest of the plot.
MJ Foxes to me is a loss to the film, his constant spastic antics might add something to the comedy, but they detract a lot from his scenes with the girl. Plus his face which is so man boyish (that of young looking older man more so than that of an older looking kid) detracts too. He also plays too much like a caricature, the girl playing his mom is so into her role, and he... well, he isn't convincing at all. Anyway I ll shut up about MJH now because a lot of people love him here. It's just doesn't do it for me, now, it did when I was a kid and watched it.
So, all in all some really good acting by Lea, a delicious conceit for a script (not so the time travel of course, but the "incestuous" bit, but too formulaic a script otherwise, and not funny where it should have been (well if you are over 20-25 or something and with some good sense of humor).
It's a classic so ratings don't really matter (and as an aside I think films are not like sacks of potatoes that you can compare by rating/weighing, even potatoes are not so unimportant that solely on weighing they can't tell us nothing about their colours, bitterness, sweetness, taste...), so I'll give it a 7.