"1.12 Gigawatts? Great Scott!"

Rating: 8/10 (13 February 2005)

Time travel movies make people have headaches, so Robert Zemeckis wisely added another layer to his movie, Back To the Future. The central question of Back To the Future is not what would it be like to go back in time, but rather, a bigger question: "What were my parents like as teenagers?" As teenagers, we always heard our parents give us rules about what we could and could not do, and we never thought maybe our parents were telling us what not to do because they did that stupid stuff themselves, we just assumed they always knew best. But what would it really be like to see what kind of awful things our parents did while young. Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), for better or for worse, finds out in Back To the Future. While trying to outrun Libyan terrorists in a modified DeLorian, McFly is transported back to October 27, 1955, 30 years in the past for this 1985 film. Doc Brown (a manic Christopher Lloyd) invents the process to time travel and put it all together in the DeLorian, and is a young scientist when McFly looks him up in 1955. Not believing the story of "Future Boy," especially after he says Ronald Reagan was president in 1985, but is eventually convinced and tries to help the young man out. While trying to get back to 1985, McFly accidentally ruins the moment that his father (Crispin Glover) meets his mother (Lea Thompson), possibly ending his own life. Parents don't meet, they don't have babies, and don't have Marty. Worse, Marty's mother starts to fall for him, so he needs to get his father and mother back together. Seeing his parents back in their teenage days is enlightening and will serve as a surprise at the end of the movie. There are several jokes about time and space, how Twin Pines Mall becomes Single Pine Mall is amusing and other changes to the town from the beginning of the movie to the end is interesting. But most of all, what would your parents to be like if you visited them 30 years ago? A great question, though do you really want it answered?