The definitive time travel adventure

Rating: 8/10 (21 October 2010)

The secret of Back To The Future is its madcap pace. Any film about time travel must be like that, because any pause will expose the implausibility of it all, and that’s disastrous. The first Terminator couldn’t afford to stop anywhere because if it did the plot becomes laughable. Non-stop action is easier to handle than comedy, because with comedy you are always mired in the time-travel ramifications, instead of side-stepping it as they do in an action flick. It’s even more difficult for Back To The Future because it takes those ramifications head on. The hero has to save himself from non-existence after he has accidentally stopped his parents from meeting each other. So it’s not just pace that makes this film work, but also ingenuity. The plot is devilishly ingenious, and ingenuity keeps popping up in other forms too throughout the film, in cross-cultural references, in incestuous asides, in time travel in-jokes etc. it’s all helped by perfect casting and great performances, particularly Christopher Lloyd as the mad scientist Doc Brown, also good were Michael J. Fox, Lea Thomson and Crispin Glover. The cinematography is excellent too. Walking back in time appears palpable. The ending is lame, however. There was no need to have a significantly altered present when Marty comes back home. The whole point was not to change the present, so the film loses a lot of credibility here. But it doesn’t take away from the joyous ride of the last 2 hours. This film became one of the most popular films of all time, and it’s on the strength of its quality alone.
The only thing I don’t understand is why they decided to make a sequel. When I sat down to watch BTTF 2 I knew I was heading for a disaster zone. I mean, if it took so much effort and ingenuity just to suspend disbelief in the first one, it’s an impossible task to keep it going for two more films. Sooner or later we are bound to be troubled by plausibility issues, and that spoils everything. I was absolutely right, and watching 2 was depressing and excruciating. Mind you, I can’t commend the makers highly enough for trying, but what’s impossible is impossible. 2 contains an even more ingenious plot, but it still ends up as utterly ridiculous, and indeed becomes an insult to the first. The first allowed us to indulge in the fantasy of “what if”. The second has us tangled in a mathematical web of “ifs” and “thens”, and this leaves no scope for fantasy. Gems like Back To The Future need to be preserved from the contamination of sequelitis. But Hollywood is a place where money rules, so I shouldn’t be fussy.