The Back to the Future trilogy has been given yet another release on DVD, with some new packaging, a few supplemental enhancements and, and… did I mention the new packaging?  Okay, so a studio is shamelessly trying to make a few bucks on a series that’s nearly twenty years old.  At least the movies in question are worth it.

Back to the Future, the first film in the series, is standout not just from the others in the trilogy, but from most films in general.  Quite simply, they just don’t make movies like this anymore.  By now, everyone’s familiar with the story of high schooler Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and his time traveling adventures with Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd).  Via a flying DeLorean, Marty zips from 1985 to 1955 and meets his parents (Crispin Glover and Lea Thompson) when they were teenagers.  Things really get screwy when, in an effort to reactivate the flying car and get back to 1985, Marty ends up messing with the course of events (everything from causing his dad to grow a pair of balls to having his mother – yikes! – fall for him).  From a screenwriting standpoint (the picture got a much-deserved nomination for Best Original Screenplay), the movie is airtight.  Every element mentioned in the first act has a payoff by the third, right down to Marty keeping a seemingly useless flyer for the town’s defunct clock tower.  The film is somehow simultaneously breezy and purposeful.  It’s got a message but feels no need to bludgeon its audience with it.  Back to the Future is exemplar of all the things a movie can be (but so few are).  It’s funny, poignant, and downright fun.

Back to the Future Part II, while a lesser film than its predecessor, is still a fresh and inventive piece of filmmaking.  Unlike so many sequels, the movie is much more than a simple retread of the one before it.  This time, Marty and Doc Brown travel back and forth through time and manage to create an entirely different future.  The “happily ever after” ending of the first film gets erased and replaced by a timeline in which Marty’s father is dead, killed by high school bully Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson).  To make matters worse, Biff has gone ahead and married Marty’s mother.  The movie impressively follows its own labyrinthine logic as butterfly effects (chiefly involving a sports almanac) cause chain reactions that resonate throughout history, but ultimately lacks the heart of the first film.  Back to the Future Part II is so concerned with the machinations of time travel and its effects thereafter, that it neglects to include the emotional core that made the first film such a grand accomplishment.  Still, the movie should be admired for some of the most ingenious visual effects (the picture was made before CGI became all the rage), particularly scenes where Michael J. Fox, playing his older self, his daughter and his son, all interact with one another around a futuristic dinner table. 

The third film in the trilogy, Back to the Future Part III tries to recapture the structure of the original picture, but ends up falling somewhat flat.  This time around, Marty and Doc find themselves in the Old West (1885, to be precise) doing battle with Buford “Maddog” Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson), Biff’s great grandfather as they struggle to get back to the future.  As in the first film, the movie’s time traveling is done at the beginning and the end, while a story plays out in a single time period for the majority of the film.  The only problem is, where the first picture was exciting, funny and entertaining, this movie turns out to be a little dull.  Sure, Doc Brown falls in love with a woman named Clara Clayton (Mary Steenburgen) and is torn between staying, leaving, or bringing her back to 1985 with him, but other than that, once things get established in the Old West, the movie starts to feel pretty standard and somewhat generic.  It hits all the touchstones of the genre – the saloons, the shootouts, etc. – but after a while, these tips of the cinematic hat start to become more cliché than chic.   

The extras on the disc are comprehensive, if not a bit overwhelming.  Each movie is stocked with its own set of supplementals; from commentaries to deleted scenes to outtakes to Q&As to behind the scenes footage.  The commentaries are lively and informative, as are the Q&As.  Some of the most fascinating material of the supplementals is the work-in-progress footage of the splitscreen sequences where actors played multiple characters in the same scenes.  ILM was responsible for the visual effects in the film and watching their efforts before they began pioneering computer generated images is remarkable.  In short, the discs’ extras tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the Back to the Future trilogy and diehard fans of the series won’t be disappointed.

FINAL GRADE

BACK TO THE FUTURE: A
BACK TO THE FUTURE Part II: B plus

BACK TO THE FUTURE Part III: B

Extras: A