Last week, my wife and I screened Back to the Future for our three boys. It was a fun idea. In the film, young Marty McFly travels 30 years into the past and meets his parents when they were his age. Back to the Future, of course, was released 30 years ago, both my wife and I saw it then, and now here we were, playing the parents, sharing it with our kids.
Call it time travel on a budget.
Seeing it again after all these years, I’ve noticed a few things that may have escaped me the first time around. #1, Christopher Lloyd absolutely runs away with this movie, pulling faces and injecting every line with a delightful combination of zaniness and earnestness. There is not a moment he’s onscreen when he is not the animating force of the film. #2, Michael J. Fox is an incredibly gifted comic actor. His Marty McFly brings to the story just the right combination of desperation, exasperation, coolness, and kindness to make him the character whom we not only root for, but whom we actively want to be. #3, Crispin Glover is a remarkably strange person. Even when he’s playing “cool dad” at the end of the film, there’s just not getting around how odd he is. #4. Biff Tannen killed Tom Wilson’s career. The character is so evil, as opposed to comic-evil, that he seems airlifted in from another movie. He’s not just a cartoonish thug, a foil for the good guys. He’s a drunk driver, a rapist, a sadist, and a serious threat to the well-being of those around him. In fact, he’s so scary that I felt compelled to stop the movie for a few minutes and show my children Wilson’s YouTube video of his “Questions” song. Sure, they knew that Biff was only a character in a movie, but I thought they needed to see the actor cracking jokes to help them internalize the fact that it’s really just make believe (Note to Iwan Rheon, who plays Ramsay Snow on HBO’s "Game of Thrones:" you need to make some silly YouTube videos before it’s too late and nobody wants to see you in anything other than “Iwan Rheon gets his face smashed in.”).
It’s that last bit, the characterization of Biff, that actually tarnishes the film for me. He’s just too evil for a light comedy about time travel and how one plucky suburban youth basically invented modern American pop culture. It throws off the film’s balance, though Christopher Lloyd does everything he can to counter it with heaping helpings of manic whimsy.
But still, hey, it’s Back to the Future. I’m still glad we showed it to our kids. Perhaps we’ll revisit it when we show it to their kids 30 years from now. After all, it’s the closest to time travel we’re ever going to come.
Call it time travel on a budget.
Seeing it again after all these years, I’ve noticed a few things that may have escaped me the first time around. #1, Christopher Lloyd absolutely runs away with this movie, pulling faces and injecting every line with a delightful combination of zaniness and earnestness. There is not a moment he’s onscreen when he is not the animating force of the film. #2, Michael J. Fox is an incredibly gifted comic actor. His Marty McFly brings to the story just the right combination of desperation, exasperation, coolness, and kindness to make him the character whom we not only root for, but whom we actively want to be. #3, Crispin Glover is a remarkably strange person. Even when he’s playing “cool dad” at the end of the film, there’s just not getting around how odd he is. #4. Biff Tannen killed Tom Wilson’s career. The character is so evil, as opposed to comic-evil, that he seems airlifted in from another movie. He’s not just a cartoonish thug, a foil for the good guys. He’s a drunk driver, a rapist, a sadist, and a serious threat to the well-being of those around him. In fact, he’s so scary that I felt compelled to stop the movie for a few minutes and show my children Wilson’s YouTube video of his “Questions” song. Sure, they knew that Biff was only a character in a movie, but I thought they needed to see the actor cracking jokes to help them internalize the fact that it’s really just make believe (Note to Iwan Rheon, who plays Ramsay Snow on HBO’s "Game of Thrones:" you need to make some silly YouTube videos before it’s too late and nobody wants to see you in anything other than “Iwan Rheon gets his face smashed in.”).
It’s that last bit, the characterization of Biff, that actually tarnishes the film for me. He’s just too evil for a light comedy about time travel and how one plucky suburban youth basically invented modern American pop culture. It throws off the film’s balance, though Christopher Lloyd does everything he can to counter it with heaping helpings of manic whimsy.
But still, hey, it’s Back to the Future. I’m still glad we showed it to our kids. Perhaps we’ll revisit it when we show it to their kids 30 years from now. After all, it’s the closest to time travel we’re ever going to come.
