wildly entertaining and beautifully constructed

Rating: 8/10 (12 December 2011)

I haven't seen this movie in 27 years. I decided to watch it again after playing Back to the Future: The Game, which made me nostalgic.
As I remembered, it's a funny, entertaining, ingenious movie that never flags. But what I could appreciate now, since even after 27 years I remembered the story remarkably well, was how nicely constructed the movie was. Nothing in it feels like a coincidence, or like a stretch. Everything is put in place. Everything Marty needs is there, but there's a good reason. Every crazy event follows a logical chain of circumstances. The movie is not simply wonderfully filmed but wonderfully designed, an example of a movie where everything has been thought out and nothing fudged. Sure, the story has the sort of time travel conundrums that make all time travel movies susceptible to criticism for being ultimately impossible, but if you accept the basic sci-fi premises, everything else makes perfect sense.
If you've never seen it, watch it just for the entertainment. If you've seen it before, watch it again just to notice how nicely put together it is.