When I walked out of my first viewing of Back to the Future, I knew I had seen my #1 film of All Time up till then. This was before I made any ranked lists for movies or directors. I only knew that Robert Zemeckis’ Romancing the Stone was my favorite, and now it was this. A few years later, this would be surpassed by Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I thought Zemeckis was better than Spielberg back then.
BTTF is a Swiss watch script. It was the textbook for me on setups and payoffs. My favorites were the Twin Pines Mall getting a name change and when Marty in the 50s meets Uncle Jailbird Joey in his crib and tells him to get used to the bars. It uses 50s nostalgia through an 80s lens to create a fish out of water story that’s lightning fast and supported by two innocent lead performances (Michael J. Fox, Lea Thompson) and three (THREE!) scene-stealers (Christopher Lloyd, Crispin Glover, Thomas F. Wilson.)
Back to the Future was a franchise/theme park/cash cow, but in an unusual twist, I think it’s one of the most poorly aged films of the modern era. John Mulaney has a routine pointing out just how weird the story is. A number of jokes are cringe, playing into sexist and racist stereotypes, and the climax uncomfortably uses sexual assault for a crowd-pleasing climax. The modern-day scenes are embarrassingly broad and as home video quality gets upgraded, the makeup just looks worse and worse. What was my favorite movie of all time is now a title I have to begrudgingly include.
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