Back to the Future (1985)

About a week before we took our blog break, I was with our son at the local Barnes & Noble to pick up Paul McCartney’s new album. There, he spotted one of those expensive little things in the media department for nostalgists with a few more dollars than sense: a picture disc LP of the Back to the Future soundtrack. He asked what that was, and I thought he was asking what a picture disc was. Somehow it just didn’t occur to me that Future would be a perfect film for this blog, where the whole idea is that I’m introducing him to movies of the past – particularly the age-appropriate ones – that he might enjoy.

Although, having said that, I think the MPAA standards have definitely changed since 1985. This film’s downright full of cussing, some of it hilarious, and there’s an attempted rape. It was a PG then, but I really doubt it would get one today.

Amusingly, introducing a kid to this film in the far-flung future of 2021 means that the popular culture of two different time periods will be unfamiliar. I did pause the movie at a couple of points, not to burden him too much with the trivia of yesteryear, but otherwise he might have missed some really good gags, like B-movie star Ronald Reagan, a man about whom no studio executive in 1955 ever offered greater enthusiasm than “he’ll do,” ending up president, and what Pepsi Free was, and how Hill Valley was just on the precipice of being ready for Chuck Berry, but not Eddie Van Halen.

While I admit Back to the Future‘s never been a film that I’ve really loved, I wouldn’t argue against it. Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale really have a lot they can be proud of with this one. It was a movie beset with production problems – go read the story of Eric Stoltz’s involvement and how Michael J. Fox functioned on about three hours of sleep a night while they made it, it’s all amazing – but they set out to make a crowd-pleaser and really nailed it. It’s simple and easy to follow – call it the anti-Primer – and it’s full of great gags and extremely likable performances from Fox, Christopher Lloyd, and Lea Thompson. Actually, Thompson gets one of the movie’s best and most understated gags: it’s always horrifying to learn that your parents were so much naughtier before you were born.

So how’d that discovery of the overpriced picture disc – $36!! – work out for the kid? He chuckled and laughed all the way through it, loving the chase around Hill Valley’s town square and cringing during the embarrassing bits, and said during the credits that he wants a Lego set of the DeLorean. Sadly, he’ll need a time machine himself to get one for a reasonable price. Lego put one out in 2014 and it can only be bought these days by other people with more dollars than sense – $282!! – but for our boy, wanting a Lego set of what he just watched is the highest accolade that a movie can receive.