It's my all-time film favorite, and here's why...

Rating: 10/10 (26 July 2002)

It's not the best movie ever made, and E.T. is a better-made sci-fi, but no other film has combined laughs and thrills the way "Back to the Future" has. I don't want to tell too much of the storyline, (because if you haven't seen it yet, you really should) but it starts off with Marty McFly, a standard '80's teenager (the setting is 1985) with a goofy, nerdy dad, an alcoholic mom, a fast-food working older brother, and older sister who doesn't really do much at all. Marty's best friend is a scientist, Dr. Emmett Brown ("Doc"), who calls him and invites him to the mall parking lot at 1:15 in the morning the next day. So he goes, and Doc reveals what he has in fact spent the last 30 years inventing: a time machine. Unlike the past versions of what time machines would look like (generally a little room), Doc's time machine is in the form of a DeLorean ("the way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine out of a car, why not do it with some style!"). It has to go 88 MPH to work (along with a few other details I won't reveal now). After a series of surprises, Marty finds himself transported back in time to the year 1955. Right after he gets there, he accidentally runs into his parents (30 years younger; Marty's age now), and VERY accidentally, interferes with the event of his parents falling in love for the first time. Not thinking much of it at the time, he goes around town, looking for the one man who can help him: Doc Brown, 30 years younger. After he finds him, Doc realizes that Marty's interfering with his parents' first meeting could have VERY bad consequences. As I said, "Back to the Future" is not the best movie ever made. However, it provides outstanding entertainment; the likes of which we haven't seen since!