Back to the Future (1985)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Eighties teenager Marty McFly is accidentally sent back in time to 1955, inadvertently disrupting his parents' first meeting and attracting his mother's romantic interest. Marty must repair the damage to history by rekindling his parents' romance and - with the help of his eccentric inventor friend Doc Brown - return to 1985.
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7 films that influenced Back to the Future
What critics say influenced Back to the Future
In 1955, the movie theater is running Cattle Queen of Montana, starring Reagan and Barbara Stanwyck.
Director Zemeckis ("Romancing the Stone") and his screenwriting partner, Bob Gale, have inverted elements of "It's a Wonderful Life," "The Time Machine," 1950's sitcoms, and the Oedipus complex.
The movie, in fact, resembles Capra's " It's a Wonderful Life " more than other, conventional time-travel movies.
It is also an undeniably fun film, one whose clever plotting, memorable characters, and deft balance of both wistful nostalgia and celebration of the here and now deserves comparisons to The Wizard of Oz (1939).
En tono, quizás la compararía con el “Superman” de Richard Donner.
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Downtown Hill Valley is a sign of the times: Storefronts are boarded up, a Goodwill shop sells used clothes to the poor, and even the Hill Valley Courthouse (a famous Universal backlot facade used in To Kill A Mockingbird and countless other films) is now the Department of Social Services.
Sure, he had some minor success with the Beatles-themed I Want to Hold Your Hand, and his Used Cars was a critically-acclaimed cult comedy.
The earlier Zemeckis/Gale/Spielberg movies, like "Used Cars," were noisy but they were at least sassy and offhand, with a pleasant, bargain-basement air.
They love the crassness, obviousness, and manic energy of old TV, and it gives their work (Used Cars, the screenplay of Spielberg's 1941) a uniquely American zip and vulgarity, like the best early-60s rock.
Zemeckis and Gale, the gifted satirists who collaborated on "Used Cars," have cannily chosen the time periods in "Back to the Future," which are funny as much for their similarities (political and materalistic) as their contrasts (music, fashions, language).
The script was turned down by everybody in Hollywood and the creative duo behind the wheel, Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale, hadn't set the box office on fire with their previous collaboration, Used Cars.
Robert Zemeckis met with such tremendous success in helming the likes of Back to the Future, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Forrest Gump that it's often easy to overlook the two gems he directed and co-wrote (with Bob Gale) at the beginning of his career.
Zemeckis and Gale have attempted to rewrite history before; "I Want to Hold Your Hand" told a fictional story about Jersey teen-agers trying to sneak in to visit the Beatles at the Plaza Hotel in 1963, while "1941" was a wild speculation on what would have happened if post-Pearl Harbor hysteria in Los Angeles had reached epidemic proportions.
They love the crassness, obviousness, and manic energy of old TV, and it gives their work (Used Cars, the screenplay of Spielberg's 1941) a uniquely American zip and vulgarity, like the best early-60s rock.