Back to the Future: 40 Years On

Robert Zemeckis’s time travel classic remains a sublime entertainment

“88 miles per hour!” Marty and Doc Brown in Back to the Future (1985). Credit: Universal

Warning: Contains spoilers.

Is there anyone who hasn’t seen Back to the Future (1985)? More to the point, is there anyone who doesn’t love it? It has charmed audiences for four decades, and I’m thrilled to say that I was one of the fortunate ones who caught it at the cinema during its original run (twice). I was ten years old at the time, and got completely captivated by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale’s brilliant time travel conceit.

The premise — a teenage boy goes back in time and his mother falls in love with him — is brilliant. However, despite the lure of “Steven Spielberg Presents” (Spielberg’s name attached to any film automatically made it a must-see), I confess my ten-year-old self initially found the Oedipal idea a little alarming. I needn’t have worried. Back to the Future handles this element of the narrative with taste and a glorious excess of charm, somehow rendering it suitable for family audiences with a PG certificate. I stand by that assessment today, even though, in the 1980s, PG films could be far more bracing than they are permitted to be today.