Is Back to the Future the greatest movie ever made?

Is Back to the Future the greatest movie ever made?  Well, probably notAlthough you couldn't have convinced me otherwise in the summer of ‘85 when I was 13. Plus, I had great movie crush on Lea Thomposon..  No one is comparing it to, say,  The Godfather.  Or Schindler’s List.  Or Rear Window. 

But I do think Back to the Future (hereafter “BTTF”) could be the most fun-to-watch movie ever made.¹  

Let me be candid here.  I am hopelessly biased towards BTTF.  I saw it as a 13 year old, right in those early adolescent, high imprint years.  I watched it with my parents — we were Family Ties fans — on opening night in one of those now rare, gigantic single-screen theaters with probably a thousand other excited people.  We laughed, we groaned, we cheered.  American cinema entertainment at its finest.  

But being hopelessly biased doesn’t mean I’m wrong!  

Nor am I alone in my BTTF esteem. IMDB slots BTTF in at #30 on their redoubtable top 250 movie list. Wikipedia says audiences and critics consider BTTF “among the best films ever made.”  (Hmm, maybe people are comparing BTTF to Godfather or Citizen Kane.) This guy says it is his all time favorite film. Some folks on Reddit think BTTF is the perfect movie.  So do these Redditors.

A Collider list of 10 Best Crowd Pleasing Movies has BTTF at #10.  I’d  say “crowd pleasing” is close enough to my “most fun-to-watch” standard.²  

So why do I think BTTF is the most fun movie to watch? 

Script and pacing. BTTF is one of those movies where everything works. There’s not a single clunky or boring moment.  You can’t wait to find out what happens next. 

Much credit for this goes to the stellar script and pacing. For example, the movie opens with dozens of ticking clocks, some overflowing dog food, a plutonium reference, all of which sound a bit dull on the page, but watching on the screen, it’s not.  You’re wondering, “What’s the deal with all those clocks?” 

A minute or two later we laugh as Marty, with his tiny yellow electric guitar, blows himself backwards by the hilariously oversized speaker.  Then a frantic, cryptic phone call from Doc (who is this Doc? we wonder), the clocks all ring at once– oh no, Marty is late for school!  Cue Huey Lewis’ rock anthem “The Power of Love” and we are hooked. 

We still don’t know the plot or anything about a time machineWhoever came up with using a sports car that has to hit 88 mph for a time machine instead of the usual “step into a box-like thing, turn the dial and travel” was a genius. but it doesn’t matter. 

Sometimes movies just work.  

Actors. Besides a great script and pacing, BTTF benefits from Michael J. FoxIncredibly, MJF was, for several months, doing Family Ties during the day and BTTF at night. He slept in the car driving him between sets and a luminous Lea Thompson in their Hollywood prime.  Like the audience, they’re having a great time in the middle of a rollicking plot that never lets up.  

The supporting actors are all gold, highlighted by zany Christopher Lloyd and the earnest Crispin Glover. Seriously, did anyone in this movie — from Michael and Lea down to the “Save the clock tower!” lady – ever have a better career highlight than their BTTF role?  

I’d like to pause here for a moment and posit that Marty’s father, George McFly, is the hidden core of BTTF.  When Marty McFly successfully gets back home to 1985, he is still the same person.  He just has a more successful family and a sweet Toyota truck – basically his teenage dreams came true.  But his father, George, is transformed.    

I mean, he knocks outI didn’t see that knockout coming until the moment it happened. Like everybody else, I was waiting for Marty or somebody – Lorraine? – to intervene and save George. Biff! 

Moreover, Glover’s acting is next level – Michael J. Fox even agrees.  Glover plays three distinct characters – the pathetic, older George McFly (that laugh!); the younger, energetic, but unpopular (yet undeniably kind of cute– you can envision Lorraine liking him) version of George McFly; and then at the end,  the confident and successful older version of George.³  He’s hilarious in the first two roles, and downright inspiring in the third.  (Shout out here to Lea Thompson who also plays three different characters – old and tired Lorraine, randy young Lorraine, and older Lorraine now married to a successful George.)   

Heart. BTTF has heart, that ineffable element that can’t be forced. We care about these characters. We’re rooting for George McFly. We hope Doc Brown survives the Libyans. And we love the bond between Marty and Doc Brown. Even though the pairing makes no sense — Marty is a high school slacker who wants to be a rock star and Doc is an odd-ball gifted scientist. We still care.

Combine that script and plot with actors in their prime cast in roles that seem made for them, a bit of movie-magic dust in all the right places, and you have the most-fun-to-watch movie ever.  

The great thing about BTTF is that you don’t have to be a child of the ’80s to adore it. My dadMy Dad (RIP 1939-2022) always cracked up when Christopher Lloyd popped out of the DeLorean at the end, dressed wildly in 2015 styles, silver sunglasses and all., a child of the ’50s, loved it. And my daughter, a child of the 2010s, loves it also.  She even has a Lego model of the BTTF DeLorean.

In 2015, we attended a BTTF 30th anniversary screening with live National Symphony Orchestra accompaniment at Wolf Trap National Park. Several DeLoreans (one of them had a replica Flux Capacitor and time travel read-outs like the movie) were parked at the entrance and Lea Thompson and director Robert Zemeckis showed up.  The concert hall and outdoor lawn area were packed with over 7000 people of all ages.     

The most fun-to-watch movie ever has to have a fun ending.  And the BTTF ending— are you kidding me? Epic. The truck, the girlfriend, and Doc’s flippant finale, “Roads?  Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.Ronald Reagan – who knew his way around a good line – later quoted this in a State of the Union speech.” Boom!  The whole theater cheered.  Many of us still are.

_______________________________________________________________

1. I’d say BTTF is a great answer to the question: Why do we make movies?  In other words, if an alien visitor to our planet were to ask, “hey, humans, I’ve been wondering, what is up with this whole movie thing?  Why do you make and watch so many of these two hour things?” you could do worse than handing them BTTF and say “just watch this.”
   ↩︎
2. If I may quibble, the Collider list contains several movies on their list that are terrific movies but I’m not sure I would not place them in the crowd pleaser (or fun to watch) category.  Casablanca (#6), Lord of the Rings (#2)? Hmm. Their #1 is The Shawshank Redemption.  I love Shawshank. One might even argue that it is in the discussion for one of the greatest movie ever made – IMDB famously has it #1 on their top movies list –  but I hesitate to call it a  “crowd pleaser’.  Or fun to watch. It takes place in a prison. Innocent people die.  I’d hesitate to show Shawshank to kids under 16.
   
   Crowd-pleasers should be fun!  A rollicking good time.  You should feel some suspense, but not stressed.  Good guys shouldn’t die (permanently).  There don’t need to be any deep messages along the lines of the Power of Friendship.  Or Of Love.  In fact, there probably shouldn’t be too much deep thinking at all.  
   
   A crowd pleaser — you’re just there for to laugh and cheer and maybe walk out of the theater giving high fives to your friends.  Collider lists Princess Bride at #5.  Yes, that’s what I’m talking about. Star Wars at #3, sure.  Top Gun: Maverick (#9), yes.  Crowd pleasers all.  
   ↩︎
3.  Apparently Glover could be difficult to work with and had his own ideas about the how the movie should develop, even disagreeing with the happy ending.  He drove director Zemeckis nuts. And he didn’t participate in the rest of the trilogy (stories vary why).  Fun fact: when the studio used Glover’s digital likeness without his permission in BTTF 2, he sued and won a big victory that every actor should be thankful for – their images may not be used without compensation. ↩︎