Amusing and commercial success.

Rating: 6/10 (20 May 2008)

Good-natured and enjoyable fantasy about Michael J. Fox (as Marty McFly) who travels 30 years into the past with the help of Dr. Brown (Christopher Lloyd) and his magic, plutonium-powered DeLorean.
The present -- that is, 1985 -- is a bit of a mess in Fox's small town. What's left of the downtown area is surrounded by strip malls. The two movie theaters are defunct. One has been converted into an evangelical church and the other shows X-rated movies. Homeless bums sleep on the benches of the town square. Fox's mother (Lea Thompson) is an overweight, hopeless alcoholic; his father is a witless nobody constantly abused by a burly friend who exploits him and then insults him for his imperfect efforts.
Lloyd is a maniacal scientist who steals plutonium from Lebanese terrorists to fuel his traveling time machine. He's shot by them as Fox barely escapes, zooming into the past.
It's 1955 now and we note that the state of the town is rather better in most respects. No garbage on the streets. No suburbs, but farmland "as far as the eye can see." A couple of good gags follow, right out of "The Twilight Zone." Pull into a gas station and half a dozen employees rush out to service your car. A cup of coffee is five cents. When Fox orders a Tab in the diner, the counter man doesn't know what he's talking about. A "Pepsi free" doesn't help.
But there are of course the kind of complications that usually follow from time travel. Fox meets his own mother and father, as well as Dr. Brown. The problem is that Fox's mother gets the hots for him and Fox must arrange for his own father to take his place in her affection. In brief, he does so, successfully travels back to 1985, and finds Dr. Brown has paid attention to a warning and worn a bullet-proof vest so he survives the terrorist shooting.
I enjoy seeing it once in a while and I gather it was immensely popular. There's just enough profanity to pep things up and keep this from being a movie for children. The plot itself isn't challenging in any way, though some of the gags require a certain maturity to be understood. Someone asks who is president in 1985. "Ronald Regan? The actor? Who's vice president -- Jerry Lewis?" Fox is a convincing high-schooler and easy to identify with. Christopher Lloyd is overly manic and with his bulging eyes resembles a creature out of the very depths of the ocean. Lea Thompson doesn't add much, but Chrispin Glover as Fox's father seems all flapping arms and legs.
I think it might have been more enjoyable if the anachronisms had been spread throughout the movie instead of being all crowded into the first ten minutes or so of the 1955 period. Some of the comedy was thrown away in the interests of special-effects and pseudo-drama. (Think of "Groundhog Day," in which all the elements are seamlessly blended.) And it also appears that McFly adapts too readily to 1955. After the first few minutes, nothing surprises him. He takes this extraordinary experience for granted and simply goes about the business of bringing his parents together and figuring out a way to get back to his real "present" before his picture disappears from the snapshot he's brought along with him. (?) I'd have been taking notes every minute. A few liberties are also taken with the norms of 1955. Good girls, like Lea Thompson, didn't reach under the table to squeeze a stranger's thigh. At least none of them did that with me. And if they
wouldn't have done it with me, they obviously wouldn't have done it to anyone. Except -- and this is probably the answer -- Lea Thompson was a slut to begin with. Yes, that must be it. How disgusting.
Anyway, you'll have fun watching the film. The kids will too. It generated three sequels, none of which I've watched.