Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site ut-sally.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!gatech!ut-sally!kelvin From: kelvin@ut-sally.UUCP (Kelvin Thompson) Newsgroups: net.movies Subject: _Back_to_the_Future_ (spoiler) Message-ID: <2706@ut-sally.UUCP> Date: Sun, 18-Aug-85 21:01:43 EDT Article-I.D.: ut-sally.2706 Posted: Sun Aug 18 21:01:43 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 20-Aug-85 01:09:09 EDT Distribution: net Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas Lines: 45 _Back_to_the_Future_ by Kelvin Thompson _Back_to_the_Future_ is a bad, confused movie. If there are any doubts that Hollywood is still rife with drug abuse, this movie can lay them to rest. The movie seems to concern a middle-class high school student, Charles J. Fox (_Sixteen_Candles_, _The_Breakfast_Club_, _Weird_Science_), and a mad scientist, Christopher Lloyd (_Foul_Play_, _Caddyshack_, _Fletch_). The two go for a ride in the scientist's DeLorean sports car, and then the student gets in trouble with his parents. Or something like that -- the movie is so chaotic that the viewer finds it difficult to figure out exactly *what* is going on. For example, one moment Fox is driving around in a parking lot, then the viewer turns to his girlfriend to talk about dinner plans and looks up to find the student staring at a farmer in the middle of nowhere. Later, when the viewer returns to his seat with some hot dogs and popcorn, he sees a strange, seemingly incestuous conversation between Fox and his mother (maybe his sister?). Still later, after the viewer has moved to a better seat, Fox is in a concert hall playing electric guitar, even though he was banned from the concert early in the film. And all through the movie, whenever the viewer looks up from trying to quiet the baby he is sitting, he notices all sorts of inconsistent details: the town square looks completely different in different scenes; the same people will sometimes drive recent-model sedans and later drive dated jalopies; and characters' ages and relationships to one another seem to shift randomly. The only conclusion the viewer can draw is that _Future_ is the most drugged-out movie since _Caddyshack_. The screenwriter must have been on hallucinogens to produce such an incomprehensible plot. Many of the actors must have been strung out or nearing the D-T's to have looked so bad in some of their scenes. Even the film editor and director must have been on mind-deadening substances to have assembled some of the scenes so obviously out of order. The producer of _Future_, Steven Spielberg (_The_Godfather_, _Apocalypse_Now_, _One_From_The_Heart_) has built a reputation as one of the "cleanest" filmmakers in Hollywood, but this incoherent, uneven movie shows that even he has succumbed to the terrible drug dependency that continues to ravage Hollywood.