goun%cadlac.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (07/01/85)
From: goun%cadlac.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (Heisenberg may have slept here)
"Back to the Future"
A film review by Roger Goun
Remember all those time travel stories you gobbled up in Amazing Stories and
Galaxy when you were a kid? Well, have I got a deal for you! "Back to the
Future", Steven Spielberg's latest epic, pays fond tribute to almost every
hackneyed skiffy time travel plot ever conceived. In addition to time
travel, the film has weird devices, silly special effects, a mad scientist,
a nerd, bad science, a love story, a skeptical hero, pseudo-alien monsters,
and a couple of plucky girls, with some foreign terrorists and a DeLorean
sports car thrown in for good measure. Fortunately, it also has humor,
excitement, rock and roll, and a couple of good performances to rescue it
from the oblivion it might otherwise have deserved.
Marty (Michael J. Fox) is an ordinary kid in a small town who hangs out with
your typical wild-eyed mad scientist. The M.S. has invented a time
machine, built into the aforementioned DeLorean, in which he intends to
travel into the future. As fate would have it, though, it is Marty who is
transported, not into the future, but thirty years into the past. Most of
the film involves his efforts to undo the changes he has accidentally made
to history, and to return to 1985. He is aided by the scientist, thirty
years younger, but still quite mad.
Fox, who plays the young capitalistic son in NBC's sitcom "Family Ties",
plays Marty strictly for laughs. He manages to convey the confusion of a
teenager in a strange world, but his delivery is often too glib in the
quieter scenes. The scientist (whose name I've forgotten), is incredibly
corny, as a proper mad scientist should be. He overacts so badly that you
can't help but smile.
As is typical of Spielberg, there are a number of references to other movies
scattered throughout "Back to the Future". A couple of attaboys to the
first person who spots the obscure reference to "Dr. Strangelove" in the
first few minutes of the action.
If you can suspend your disbelief well enough and long enough, "Back to the
Future" will keep you breathing fast and laughing often. On the zero- to
five-star scale, it gets a three. Go see it.
-- Roger Goun
ARPA: goun%cadlac.DEC@decwrl.ARPA
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