Back to the Future (1985) review

Endearing populist movie with its now famous storyline about teenager Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) accidentally traveling back in time to 1955 and getting stuck in a warped Oedipal scenario where he has to get his father laid (by his mother) in order to exist. Fox is perfect as the spry, all-American lead, but Christopher Lloyd as the mad professor who invents time travel via automobile and the painfully awkward Crispin Glover (as Fox's father) constitute the pleasurably tacky center of this cartoonish Tootsie Pop. The other two films of the trilogy are negligible (though alluded to by the end of this - someone had to have figured it would be a hit) but even twenty years later this very first installment remains an entertaining 80's staple like Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Fast Times at Ridgemont High.