I would be sincerely surprised if there is anyone out there over the age of 30 that hasn't already seen this film. Even if you are under 30 I would still find it a little hard to believe. I have seen this movie hundreds of times, can quote the characters at really any point in the film but I still enjoy watching it every time. Why is that?
Reasons I still love the film:
- Fond memories: every single time i was sick (or pretending to be sick so i could stay home from school) I would pop this VHS cassette in the player and lie down on the sofa. We didn't have a huge variety of films so I think it was either this, Raiders of the Lost Arc and Conan the Barbarian. Those are all great films but I enjoyed BTTF the best.
The DeLorean is a seriously cool car. I had never seen a car with doors that opened like that before. I think it is an incredibly impractical vehicle and as it turns out the Delorean is actually a piece of crap car and that is why the company didn't last very long. I am sure they sold quite a few of them because of this movie though. Every now and then someone has one as a collectors piece and I am always a little bit angry with them if they don't install a flex capacitor.
The story is really good. Of course it is an American film so you know right at the beginning that the good guys are going to win, but the sequence where Marty is watching his family members disappear on the photos is pretty intense. In case you had forgotten it isn't entirely up to Marty to save the day and he needs his father to "man up" on the dance floor to secure the future.
this was crazy creepy to a kid in the 80's
- Marty was a seriously cool character: I always suspected that Michael J. Fox was actually much older than the character "Marty" but he pulled it off well. He is a bit of an outsider, does really cool things like skateboards to school by hanging on the bumpers of cars, plays guitar, has a scientist pal who gives him access to an enormous amplifier for some reason, and his girlfriend is hot.
I think everyone wanted to be Marty in the 80's.
The film had a kick-ass soundtrack: I know Huey Louis and the News isn't exactly classic rock or anything but he was kind of a big deal in the 80's. If I hear "The Power of Love" today, i still like it. I competed in several lip-syncing contest with this song and lost all of them.
The "Johnny B Goode" performance is pretty wild. It is a little irritating that it is obvious that Michael J. Fox isn't singing because the vocals sound nothing like his voice. However the performance is funny and exciting because no one at that point in time had ever heard rock and roll.
This trailer doesn't do the film justice but it's the only one I could find.
The film came out in 1985 and i guess i was just the right age to appreciate this, but here we are more than 30 years later and I still find that the film stands the test of time. It ended up making nearly 400 million dollars which in today's money is 876 million (I made that up). 56 million Americans went to see the movie in theaters (I did not make this up.)
Do you have fond memories of this movie? Do you agree it is one of the best of the 80's. Do you think i am an idiot for having it be my favorite of all time?