Matthew A Hawkins Reviews Back to the Future
Let me take a moment of your time to review a movie you may or may not have seen yet. It's a movie of enormous improbabilities that could only be seen as cheesy, effects driven and time sensitive. A recipe for disaster to say the least. Steven Spielberg is at it again. As if The Goonies, Gremlins, ET, and Indiana Jones weren't enough, Steven had to bring us Marty McFly. Teamed up with the director with one hit under his belt, Robert Zemeckis, they do their best to bring a quality 80's time travelling movie to the silver screen. Obviously they weren't thinking when they planned this one out.
Synopsis Back to the Future is about Marty McFly and his lovely town of Hill Valley. Marty, being a complete loser, with a hot girlfriend and killer skateboard, has only two friends: Doctor Emmitt Brown aka "Doc" and his dog Einstein (completely original name for a dog whose owner is a scientist...). Long story short, Marty tries to help Doc get away from some psycho Libyan Nationalists that he stole radioactive materials from. Doc is gunned down and Marty uses the DeLorean Time Machine to get away and in so doing, skips back in time to 1955 - 30 years in the past.
In 1955 Marty is faced with the dilemma of having to find an earlier version of Doc to help him get back to the future (yes cheesy title is now incorporated with the movie, who would have thought?). In the process of trying to get back, Marty runs into his parents when they were teenagers and is left with the enormous responsibility of not rupturing the space time continuum. HEAVY!
Through daring adventures on box car wheels, 50's diners, under the sea dances and dreamy music, Marty has to find his way back to the Hill Valley he knows AND make sure his parents get together or thwart is very existence. An 'impressive' plot to say the least.
REVIEW This movie is well beyond goofy. For starters let's begin with the simple notion of a DeLorean sports car being able to travel through time. Could the creators of the movie not come up with a more original, non-product placed commercial vehicle to use for a time machine? There is no doubt sales for DeLorean's went through the roof when this movie was released. Money grab if I've ever seen one.
Next is the shallow, poorly driven character development. That development combined with quick one off catch phrases leaves only a strong dislike in my mouth. "This is heavy!" cannot be coined as a good catchphrase anywhere, nor can 'Great Scott' ever be used to create any sort of franchise movie.
In short, Back to the Future is a one hit wonder with a practically unknown cast and with little future. Pun intended. It wreaks of product placement, shallow development and a predictable plot. The movie is far from 'heavy' and will be remembered as one of those movies of the 80's that should stay in the 80's. It is neither ahead of or behind it's time. It will simply just go forgotten.
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Cheers
Matthew A Hawkins