Back to the Future: 25th Anniversary

Hey Hollywood...why is this the most entertaining film I've seen in the theater this year?

Back to the Future, as anyone with any rational taste in good movies knows, is Robert Zemeckis' 1985 comedy/action/sci-fi/time travel adventure about Marty McFly, a high school kid with a completely hopeless family who accidentally gets sent back to 1955 in a time machine built out of a DeLorean that was invented by his mad scientist best friend, Doc Brown.  Once he gets there, he screws up how his parents meet (which makes his mother fall in love with him instead of the kid who will eventually be his father), so not only does he need to enlist the younger version of Doc to help him get back to the future, he also needs to make sure that his parents meet and fall in love so that he'll actually exist when he gets there.

It went on to become the highest-grossing movie of 1985, spawned two sequels, a Universal Studios theme park ride, and an animated series.  It's also arguably one of the most quotable movies to come out of the 1980s - if you have any doubts about that, I'll just remind you to check out the name of our site again.

I saw Back to the Future twice when it was first released in 1985.  Back then, I was 11 years old and thought that it was the funniest movie I'd ever seen.  I also wound up with such a total crush on Michael J. Fox that I'm fairly certain that I single-handedly kept the teen magazine industry in business that summer.  I liked it so much that my parents actually bought the rental copy of the VHS tape from the video store because I think they figured it would ultimately be cheaper than renting it a million times (they were probably right).  And I still have that VHS tape today.

This week, I got to see Back to the Future on the big screen again, thanks to the AMC re-release to celebrate the film's 25th Anniversary and the arrival of the complete trilogy on blu-ray. Getting to see it again on the big screen was a blast.  The show at the AMC Empire 25 in NY where I saw it was completely sold out and filled not just with crazed BTTF fans who could probably recite every line backwards (although we had plenty of those), but people who were saying they hadn't seen it in years and had forgotten how hilarious it was, and others who were bringing their kids, who, judging from their reactions during the movie, were already big fans too. 

They were laughing and cheering so much that it was almost hard to hear the movie in spots.  I remember the movie getting a similar reaction on opening weekend in 1985, but back then it was a crowd who was seeing the movie for the first time.  Now, everyone was one step ahead of the jokes ("Why are things so heavy in the future?  Is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?") and classic moments from the movie (George decking Biff is still one of the greatest single punches in movie history), and cheering it all on like they were welcoming back an old friend.  

Another thing I remember from seeing it in 1985 was how all the adults were cracking up over all of the 1950s references - since that's the time when most of them had grown up.  Now that it's 1985 that seems like a long time ago, it was us thirtysomethings were laughing at things like old Walkmans, Huey Lewis cameos, giant video cameras, and references to Pepsi Free. 

Amazingly, I think the Pepsi Free line is the only seriously dated joke in the entire movie.  The rest of it has held up incredibly well over 25 years.  It's still insanely funny, perfectly cast (and yes, I still think Michael J. Fox is adorable) and brilliantly told.  Watching it as a little kid, I was wild about it because it was just such a funny movie.  Watching it now as a grown-up film geek, I'm just blown away at how there's just not a wasted moment in the entire film, how perfectly every part of the story manages to come together, and of course, how easily I can watch it a ton of times and still never get sick of it. 

In an era of grouchy superheroes, remakes, reboots, and 3D mania, it was just great to see a movie that didn't need any of that to be awesome.  Seeing it in the theater again was fantastic.  And now that I have my blu-ray box set of the entire trilogy, I'll be enjoying it for a long time to come.