BACK TO THE FUTURE

   Film (1985). Amblin Entertainment/Universal. Dir Robert Zemeckis, Steven SPIELBERG among the executive prods, starring Michael J.Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, Thomas F.Wilson. Screenplay Zemeckis, Bob Gale. 116 mins. Colour.

   One of the major sf hits of the 1980s, BTTF is a disarming, calculated and intelligent comedy about TIME TRAVEL. Teenage guitar-playing Marty (Fox), son of a tacky and ineffectual mother and father (Thompson and Glover), is interrupted by Libyan terrorists while helping mad scientist Emmett Brown (Lloyd) test a TIME MACHINE mounted in a DeLorean car, and escapes to 1955. There he seeks out the young Dr Brown, but is disturbed to find his (now teenaged) mother strongly sexually attracted to him. The oedipal and culture-clash themes are deftly worked out with great good humour and something falling mercifully short of complete good taste. After demonstrating the power of rock'n'roll and convincing his teenage father to stand up to Biff the bully, he returns with the young Dr Brown's assistance to find a changed 1985, complete with a spruce mother and a confident father who is now a successful sf writer. One of the few sf blockbusters made by a director wholly comfortable with the conventions of GENRE SF, BTTF deserved its success and won a HUGO. There was a four-year wait for its two sequels, BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II and BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III. See also: CINEMA.