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| 'He was never in time for his classes... He wasn't in time for his dinner... Then one day... he wasn't in his time at all' reads the great tagline on this spectacular poster for Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future |
Marty McFly is a lively high-school kid in '85, who hangs around now and again at his friend Doc Brown's house/laboratory. The good doc has now devised a time machine out of a DeLorean, and by and by McFly gets catapulted back to the 1950s, where he endangers the surety of his mother and father falling in love, and thereby his own existence!
Back to the Future is written by co-writer/co-producer Bob Gale (Used Cars (1980)) and co-writer/director, master Illinoisan filmmaker Robert Zemeckis (I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978)), whose 4th feature it was.
The film is pop culture history and a prime example of Hollywood at its very best. Seemingly without straining itself to achieve it, it captures with wonderful sharpness so many things from the life and mentality of America in the 80s, - a good deal of it through parodying America of the 50s. Back to the Future is incredibly vivid good fun.
Christopher Lloyd (The Pagemaster (1994)) and Michael J. Fox (Mars Attacks! (1996)) are both perfect in their parts, funny and enthusiastic with great
on-screen chemistry. Crispin Glover (Dead Man
(1995)) is also hilarious and memorable as McFly's door mat of a dork
father, who learns how to stand up for himself from his son.
Zemeckis
pulled it all together and directed the film with great skill and
vision and along the way immortalized himself in cinema history with one of the best
time travel films of all time. Back to the Future is wildly entertaining and wildly popular: One of the great time-related jokes in the film is about that guy on TV in the 50s, who isn't likely going to be president, (that guy being, of course, Ronald Reagan, who was a Hollywood actor before he became a politician and later president.) Reagan was reportedly amused by the joke himself and even incorporated Back to the Future
in his 1986 State of the Union address, saying: "Never has there been a
more exciting time to be alive, a time of rousing wonder and heroic
achievement. As they said in the film Back to the Future, 'Where we're going, we don't need roads'." - The 80s in some ways was an exciting, optimistic time.
The film also has a fun cameo by Huey Lewis, and two great pop themes, The Power of Love, and Back in Time, also both written for the film, - to great success on their own as hit songs as well, - by Huey Lewis and the News.
Zemeckis and Gale
have orchestrated a romantic science fiction adventure story that is
highly original. It holds up to the last second and to many joyful
returns.
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Cost: 19 mil. $
Box office: 383.8 mil. $
= Blockbuster (returned 20.2 times its cost)
[Back to the Future was released 3 July (USA) and runs 116 minutes. The film was developed after a string of initial flops for Zemeckis and Gale and thus didn't find support until after the release of Zemeckis' first big hit Romancing the Stone (1984). Then the green-lit project was rushed into production with the wrong star in the McFly part, Eric Stoltz. Weeks into production the decision was taken to replace Stoltz (full salary paid) and switch him with Fox, who was secured while still simultaneously acting on his sitcom Family Ties (1982-89). Fox was paid 250k $ for his performance. The decision was central in the film's costs growing over-budget by 4 mil. $ during production. Shooting took place from November 1984 - April 1985 in California, including in Los Angeles. The film was rushed through post production for a mid-summer release. It opened #1 to an 11.1 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed #1 for another 10 weekends, with 8 more spent in the top 5, grossing 210.6 mil. $ (54.9 % of the total gross). It was the year's highest-grossing film, the highest-grossing in North America and the 3rd highest grossing of the year outside of North America, behind Out of Africa and Rocky IV. The film was nominated for 4 Oscars, winning for Sound Effects Editing. It lost Best Original Song (The Power of Love) to Say You, Say Me from White Nights by Lionel Ritchie, Sound to Out of Africa and Original Screenplay to Earl Wallace for Witness. It was also nominated for 5 BAFTAs, won 2 David di Donatello awards, was nominated for 4 Golden Globes, a Grammy, won a National Board of Review award, among many other honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3.5/4 star review, equal in rating to this one. IMDb's users have voted the film in at #30 on the site's Top 250 list, sitting between Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) and Spirited Away (2001). The film was the first in what became the Back to the Future trilogy with returning filmmaker Zemeckis, writer Gale and Fox, Lloyd and others; Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Back to the Future Part III (1990) were the result. Zemeckis first returned with Amazing Stories (1986). Fox first returned in Teen Wolf (1985); Lloyd in Clue (1985). Back to the Future is certified fresh at 97 % with an 8.80/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
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