The BIG 400TH REVIEW...Back To The Future is a top ten in my books!!

Rating: 10/10 (4 August 2006)

Here I am...wow...like it amazes me every time. This is my 400th review on IMDb. Three years or more, 400 films, some good, some REEEALLY bad and I hope everyone enjoys my reviews because I enjoy writing them and I don't plan on stopping. So for each 100 films I have reviews a Superman film being such a huge fan but for 400 I decided on something special...this film easily hits my top ten of all time favorites list so without further adieu...Back To The Future.
Did they know they were making something this incredible when they were making it?? I think perhaps they did, that is part of the magic because Director and creator Robert Zemeckis holds nothing back from this flat out eighties classic fantasy adventure. The film is just so incredibly unique taking a cool, completely hip stereo typical eighties teenager and tossing him back into the mid fifties experience and forcing him to save his own existence by making sure his mother and father hook up. The special effects, the utter intense detail that goes into this amazing story line that makes sure everything flows properly, and captures not only 1985 vividly, but 1955 vividly. Zemeckie creates Hill Valley California from scratch and makes it feel like everyone's home town and he makes sure that we see every aspect of it so we can be as stunned and blown away by 1955 Hill Valley just like Marty McFly. This film is just brilliant.
Marty McFly, a classic character in the history of film is played by the irrepressible Michael J. Fox in his hey day. Fox (although 24 at the time) was perfect as the 17 year old kid that everybody wanted to be, and everybody wanted to be his friend and for the course of the film you felt like you were right there along with him. This is without a doubt Fox's best role and he has had some good ones but this one takes the cake. He is so smooth and a fast talking, material driven, eighties kid and he's perfect. How can we forget Dr. Emmett Brown?? We can't!! Christopher Lloyd plays the most eccentric and yet brilliant Scientist inventor of the eighties. Doc, as he is known to Marty, is brilliant but almost to the point of insanity. It shows in his personality, his actions and his creations. His I.Q. is obviously off the charts. Despite the age different Doc Brown and Marty have this incredible friendship and Fox and Lloyd's chemistry reflect this strong bond between them. No one could have expected these two would be such a great pairing but they are!! Lea Thompson plays Marty's mother Lorraine Baines McFly. She spends more time playing the bubbly, rebellious teenage Lorraine and she's terrificly believable as both that role and as Marty's mother. Crispin Glover plays whiny, rather weak George McFly, Marty's father. Now I'm not a big fan of Glover and his personal decisions (such as suing the producers of the sequels to this film) had not made me like him any more but he truly created a unique and terrific anti hero in George Mcfly. I will forever associate Back To The Future with the nerdy annoying laugh and his petrified nerdy walk. Thomas F. Wilson is the bully that everyone wanted to see get his in the end Biff Tannen. Wilson is just terrific as a guy that you absolutely despise and yet he still strikes that feeling of dread when he shows up...he's the perfect bully and adversary to Marty AND his father in 1955. They share the same enemy. The cast mesh so well together and the transformations of thirty years between everyone in the cast with the exception of Michael J. Fox is really astounding. I mean sometimes the make up looks a little cheesy but it's really quite amazing to see them. You really feel like you're traveling in time.
And isn't that what makes Back To The Future one of the most incredible adventures of all time. You're right there with Marty 100% of the time and you feel like you're going through everything that he is. The story is brilliant and in such a complex film about time travel there is BOUND to be plot holes but Zemeckis does an incredible job and barely making you notice them and wrapping things up so carefully and creating this incredible world around the characters. Back To The Future is not something someone might see, it's something every single person should see because it IS a classic film and always will be. To this day (20 years after the fact) Back To The Future holds up as well now as it did then against ANY big budget special effects film nowadays. It was years ahead of it's time making it the absolute must see. The movie has a kick ass soundtrack featuring a lot of Huey Lewis and The News tracks that became associated with this film (Power of Love--for instance), and it's the absolute quintessential eighties film...the power of wanting material things (Marty's truck, George McFly's book) social status based on appearance...that's the eighties way!! Throw in some what was then "cool" four letter words (not a lot but enough to make it feel naughty to the youngsters) and you got yourself everything that Back To The Future is. An incredible film that I have probably seen a hundred times and love it equally as much every single time. 10/10 THANKS FOR READING MY REVIEWS...100 MORE TO GO TILL 500!!