MY MOVIE SHELF: Back to the Future Part II

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 125 Days to go: 87

Movie #315:  Back to the Future Part II

First things first, I love Elisabeth Shue. She’s lovely. Adventures in Babysitting is like one of my most beloved movies from pre-adolescence, The Karate Kid is wonderful (and I don’t know why we don’t have it, since I know I used to), Cocktail was one of those things I watched a million times (also owned that one once upon a time), and not just to memorize Tom Cruise’s bartender poem, and she was positively devastating and wonderful at once in Leaving Las Vegas. Love her. But she is an awful Jennifer Parker. I’m fairly certain the actress who played Jennifer in the first film couldn’t come back for the sequels because of some other job, or maybe the filmmakers wanted a more established actress since the role was being (barely) expanded, but for whatever reason they put Shue in the sequels and it was the worst thing ever. Maybe if they’d let her have her normal hair or if she could try not to look like the effortlessly cool sex magnet the original Jennifer was, it would’ve been okay. But they didn’t. They put her in some godawful wig (I assume — if they did that to her natural hair on purpose, that’s a crime against hairstyling) and made her wear clothes that were similar to, but not exact replicas of, the outfits the original Jennifer wore, which looked weird on her body, and, I’m sorry, but sexy cool sex magnet was just never the role Elisabeth Shue was meant to play. So instead she’s just awkward and ill-fitting. It’s the first of about a dozen huge disappointments Back to the Future Part II embodied.

The first time I watched a version of Back to the Future in which the final title card definitively alluded to an upcoming sequel, I flipped my lid. Another Back to the Future movie! Yes! This was going to be great! (This was Not Great.)

When Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) shows up in front of Marty (Michael J. Fox) and Jennifer at the end of Back to the Future, he insists they come back with him to the future. Not, as Marty asks, because they’ve become assholes, but, “It’s your kids! Something’s got to be done about your kids!” It’s a great teasing line to close a movie on that you don’t know will be a franchise, but it kind of puts the filmmakers in a bind when an actual sequel is ordered. Suddenly you’ve cornered yourself into a film in which, presumably, your star actor won’t be the focus, pretty much undermining the entire reason anyone wants you to make a sequel in the first place. It’s a big problem.

Unfortunately, writer-director Robert Zemeckis and crew decided the best way around this was to 1) offer up some insignificant yet overblown, easily fixable issue with the “kids” as an excuse to get the protagonists into their future, where the real crisis of the film would come to light, and 2) have Michael J. Fox play the kids. It’s … ugh. I mean, again, I love Fox. He’s affable and charming and he carries the role of Marty (plain, regular, present-tense Marty) just fine. But there’s no reason for him to play his kids — especially not his daughter, who he doesn’t have to impersonate in order to fool Griff (Biff’s grandson, both played by Thomas F. Wilson). Just, none. He’s not good at it, it’s not funny, and it’s more distracting and weird than it could ever be beneficial. It’s a terrible move.

The other horrible decision on the part of the writers is the decision to make Marty sensitive to being called chicken. This is just the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard — even more stupid than having Michael J. Fox play all the McFly children. There is absolutely no indication that he bears this affliction in Back to the Future, why is it suddenly a cornerstone of his character? In the first film, Marty even sets himself up to look less manly and less tough than Lorraine (Lea Thompson) thinks he is. He’s attempting to playact being the unchivalrous brute who’s actually a weakling, meaning he is neither of these things in actuality AND that he doesn’t mind people, who don’t know him or whose opinions of him don’t matter, seeing him as such. So being called a chicken, be it in 1955, 1985 or 2015, should be a meaningless remark, not the underpinning of two (spoiler alert?) sequels and of Marty’s entire downfall.

Anyway, despite how it may seem, there are things about Back to the Future Part II that I do like. For whatever reason, I enjoy the dystopian 1985, complete with Lorraine’s fake boobs, a giant casino hotel, and the absurd idea that the richest man in the universe would still live in Hill Valley. I also thought it was a fascinating twist that George (Crispin Glover) was dead in this alterna-85, and the first time I saw the movie I’d thought hopefully that perhaps that was the new timeline they would visit. (They didn’t, but it was still a nice thought.) And in truth the silly futuristic vision of 2015 is pretty funny, the way all comedic visions of the future sort of are, though I do wonder if I can sue Robert Zemeckis for discouraging me from going to law school, what with me thinking all laywers would be abolished by 2015. (Hilariously, my son pointed out as we watched this today that the stupid clock tower is still broken in 2015. It’s probably the most realistic — and likely — future detail in the whole film.)

Back to the Future Part II also delves directly into the time travel paradox problem, revolving around a plot in which a future Biff steals the sports almanac and the DeLorean from present Doc and Marty, travels back to past Biff, and creates a whole new 1985 universe. It’s exactly the kind of destiny-changing catastrophe Doc warns about in the original, and it’s exactly the kind of thing I love to wrap my mind around. Sadly, the movie doesn’t even respect its own logic, because when Biff goes back to 1955 and changes everything, the 2015 he returns the DeLorean to (and that Marty and Doc are in) no longer exists. I know I’ve seen several attempts to explain and justify this over the years, but none of it makes sense. Nor does it make sense that you can leave Jennifer in a timeline that will no longer exist once you return for her and that she’ll simply revert to the correct timeline. I realize it’s a silly fantasy film, but as someone who thinks about the logistics of time travel and alternate universes quite a bit, I find the laziness employed here extremely frustrating.

Thank God the movie somewhat redeems itself in its concluding film.

 

MY MOVIE SHELF: Back to the Future

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 126 Days to go: 87

Movie #314:  Back to the Future

Back to the Future is in this really weird place, culturally. It’s one of those movies I consider timeless and entertaining, and yet it’s becoming more and more laughably outdated with every passing year (and that’s without taking into consideration its two sequels). (Take, for instance, the sort of hilarity inherent in Huey Lewis appearing as a band judge who declares the music of our young Marty McFly — Michael J. Fox at his most adorable — as “too darn loud.” It’s supposed to be funny — was originally intended as funny, in fact — because Huey Lewis is in a rock band playing rock music and we’re all jamming out to it on the soundtrack as Marty skateboard-skis his way around town, holding onto the bumpers of various cars. But it’s become funny — a different kind of funny — because we’re talking freaking Huey Lewis and the News, here, not, like, real rock, so Marty’s music really IS too darn loud. It’s hilarious!) In this way, it’s like a perfect snapshot of 1985 — evocative, nostalgic and outdated. But it’s also a great, fun film. My son has no connection to 1985, other than knowing the Bowling for Soup song, so to him the movie is strictly a work of fiction — none of these worlds are recognizable to him — and that works. He LOVES Back to the Future. He’s invested in the characters, really gets into the story, and cackles like crazy when Biff (Thomas F. Wilson) drives his car into a manure truck. I figure that means I’m raising him right.

It’s an infinitely enjoyable film, after all, and it holds up well in that regard. Marty’s pre-DeLorean 1985 world is so clearly drawn. His father George (Crispin Glover) is an awkward, distracted, greasy-haired doormat, constantly under the thumb of his coworker Biff. His mom Lorraine (Lea Thompson) is a puffy, prudish alcoholic. His brother and sister are total losers. They live in a slightly run-down subdivision, have only one car, and nothing they own is very nice. Marty is the only remotely cool one of the bunch, what with his hot girlfriend Jennifer (Claudia Wells) and being in a band and doing that skateboard thing. He even likes sweet black trucks who look like Ironhide. (That’s a Transformer. I wouldn’t know that without my husband.) (Also, the truck looks like Ironhide in the movie. I have no idea what Ironhide looked like in the cartoon.)

The post-DeLorean 1985 is also drawn pretty clearly, pivoting almost all of those details to account for the drastic change in George and Lorraine’s meeting, courtship and formative years at the hands of Marty’s involvement, even if the details themselves don’t make much sense anymore. Like, why, if the family is so successful now, do Marty’s siblings still live at home? Why are they still living in this home, even? Does Marty’s insertion into the world of 1955 somehow prevent Lyon Estates from deteriorating in the ’80s? How does that work? And why does Marty now own the sweet ass Ironhide truck of his dreams? These are all important questions, and they are made possible by virtue of the time travel paradox.

Back to the Future is the first movie I remember seeing about time travel, but, more importantly, it’s the first time travel story I remember dealing directly with the problem of the time travel paradox — how once you travel into the past, the future is inextricably altered. Things were never going to be just as they were, because things in the past are no longer how they were. It’s like dominoes, everything is connected. Every little piece of our world is balanced precariously on the precise outcome of something else, and the tiniest change cascades a billion different subsequent things until nothing’s the same anymore and it can’t be put back. I love thinking about that. It’s an ongoing theme in my life, contemplating miniscule changes that make all the difference, and I love that Back to the Future shares that interest.

Of course, it also raises the question, if you think about it too long, of whether or not Marty was always there in the past, because he always traveled there from the future. The majority of the plot doesn’t bend in that direction, of course, but one of the clocks Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) owns at the beginning of the film (pre-Marty’s time travel) is an exact replica of him hanging off the town’s clock tower when the lightning struck (post-Marty’s time travel). It’s a tiny detail, and it’s never explored in the film, but it makes my mind do cartwheels, imagining the significance of such a piece in Doc’s collection.

There are things, too, that don’t add up. Like, in what world is ten minutes a significant amount of time to save someone from Libyan terrorists? Or how do you collect the pieces of a note that you’ve torn to bits and scattered to the wind moments before a huge storm? Or why in the world are these people still in contact with Biff? But I’m willing to overlook all of those for the simple fact that I love Back to the Future, I love Rube Goldberg alarm clocks, I love Jennifer’s floral print jeans, I love that Doc says gigawatt with a soft g, and I love that, in this movie at least, the promise of the sequel actually depended on something having to be done about their kids, before the next one went and ruined that completely.

“Now why don’t you make like a tree, and get out of here?”

 

MY MOVIE SHELF: Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle

This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #49: Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle

I suppose when you have a completely airheaded original movie, the sequel is almost required to be somewhat more substantive, and that’s definitely the case with Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. Don’t get me wrong — it’s still frothy, silly fun, but the plot is more cohesive and weightier than its predecessor. And yet it also manages to have the expected more-ness of a sequel — more explosions, more flash, more goofy costumes, etc.

First and foremost, Demi Moore makes a perfect villain. She’s entirely believable both as a former Angel (Madison Lee) and a ruthless killer. Her friendly, excited exchange with Natalie (Cameron Diaz) at the beach and her tearful, angry exchange with Charlie (John Forsythe) are two sides of a spectacular coin. Plus she’s gorgeous and her body is rockin’.

Justin Theroux is also terrifying as Seamus O’Grady, Irish mob leader and ex-boyfriend of Dylan (Drew Barrymore) back when she was still Helen Zaas (!!!), put him in jail, and went into witness protection. He’s smart, ripped, sexy, and unmerciful. Plus, that Irish accent he adopts is to die for. (He even looks good/scary in flashback braces and a mullet.) While not exactly working in concert with Madison Lee, they make a lethal tag team.

Two additions that don’t quite work for me are Shia LaBeouf as Leo/Max and Bernie Mac as the new Bosley. I understand there were personality clashes with Bill Murray in the first movie, and I definitely agree Bernie Mac is hilarious, but he seems to distract more than he should by doing his own schtick through all of his scenes. There’s one point where Alex (Lucy Liu) can’t stop giggling at him in a scene where the Angels are supposed to be more composed. And yes, this was back when LaBeouf was a normal person and a semi-popular child actor, but he’s still awkward and seems out of place — like even then, he didn’t know how to be goofy/funny in the same way as everyone else.

Full Throttle has more great cameos, though: Bruce Willis as a justice department head who gets assassinated by the character his ex-wife is playing, Eve and the Olsen twins as potential future Angels, Jaclyn Smith reprising her original TV Angel role of Kelly Garrett, Carrie Fisher as a really weird nun, Pink as a dirt bike race chick with unbelievable abs, Luke Wilson’s older brother Andrew as a somewhat incompetent cop, John Cleese as Alex’s dad who thinks she’s a prostitute, and once again the incomparable Crispin Glover as the mysterious Thin Man.

If you watch the extended cut of this movie, there’s a scene in which Glover’s character has disappeared from the alley where he supposedly falls to his death. I wrote an entire treatment for a third Angels movie to deal with the backstory and return of the Thin Man, complete with Dylan romance, based on that one throwaway shot. I still really want to produce it. Kickstarter, maybe?

Of course, while I say the plot is more substantive, I still wouldn’t recommend putting too much analysis toward it. It’s not that substantive, but it is still a lot of fun. It’s still punny and quippy and flashy and goofy and I still really love it a lot — I’ve never disliked Cameron Diaz after this came out, which is really quite an accomplishment. There’s the cock and the beaver, the ferret, Helen Zaas (!!!), Cameron Diaz in a mullet as the Angels do some elaborate CSI bit, floating titanium rings in champagne (Diaz pulling off her knife-opening party trick long before What Happens in Vegas), using broken pieces of wood as skateboards down a ship line, and Alex introducing Dylan to her father as the head of gynecology (Drew’s face is priceless).

I totally love it; I’m not ashamed.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Charlie’s Angels

This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #48: Charlie’s Angels

Here’s some interesting math. I’ve had a lifelong affinity for Drew Barrymore. Like the weird guy who did the My Date With Drew movie, only I never had any interest in stalking her. I can’t explain it, really, I just think she’s awesome and our birthdays are close together and I’d really like to hang out and be friends with her. Whatever. On the other side of that coin, I really detested Cameron Diaz ever since The Mask. Again, I couldn’t put my finger on it, but she was just so … false, maybe? I found her completely and utterly annoying. BUT! If you take my huge affection for Drew, add Lucy Liu, who I was kind of neutral-positive on (she wasn’t all that well-known at the time, though she’d had small roles in lots of things for several years), multiply it by my love of quippy, flashy movies (to the very concept of a Charlie’s Angels reboot-th power), and add the square root of at least half a dozen clever cameos plus a killer breakout performance by Sam Rockwell, it actually MAKES ME LIKE CAMERON DIAZ. Only in this one movie at first, but after the sequel it was completely cemented. Weird, right?

There’s not even anything to this movie, except quips and flash. The plot is somehow both convoluted and thin, and it apparently exists only to give its three stars the opportunity to vamp it up in crazy costumes. It’s silly and punny and charming and I absolutely love it. I love Matt LeBlanc as a big time action movie star (it’s almost as if Joey Tribbiani finally made it). I love Tim Curry as a pervy billionaire. I love Melissa McCarthy as the overfriendly office worker. I love L.L. Cool J (all the ladies love Cool James, you know) going meta in the opening scene by complaining about cheesy TV shows being made into movies and then turning out to be one of Drew’s costumes. I love Drew’s ex-boyfriend Luke Wilson and current (at the time) boyfriend Tom Green both showing up as romantic interests — Wilson as Pete, for Diaz’s Natalie, and Green as Chad for Barrymore’s Dylan aka Starfish. (Drew really seems like the kind of woman who becomes friends with all, or at least several, of her exes — which seems like a theoretically great way to be, though I could never pull it off with any kind of aplomb.) And I love love love love love Crispin Glover as the creepy thin man who escapes death at least twice in this movie alone (spoiler — he’s in the sequel).

The Angels themselves are also just perfect, as far as I’m concerned. Natalie with her dance sequences, Dylan’s transparent interest in Knox (Rockwell) (she wants to shake, not bake), and Alex constantly flipping her “goddamn hair” in slow motion. In the same way women like to tell you which Sex and the City character they are most like, I compare myself to these particular Angels, and I am all of them. I am a weird combination of flighty and brilliant and I can be very easily amused (Natalie). I’m an offbeat girl with a sometimes harder edge who likes the risk, sexiness and excitement of a bad boy but is always looking for a sense of belonging (Dylan). And I’m a matter-of-fact woman who knows what she wants and makes plans to go out and get it, sans bullshit (Alex).

I really enjoy a lot of this film: the singing yodel-gram girls, Dylan at the speedway in a va-va-va-voom jumpsuit with tons of ’70s porn star blonde hair and cleavage licking a steering wheel, Alex as a dominatrix efficiency expert, Alex as a masseuse with a french-tip  pedicure (the first time I’d ever seen such a thing, and suddenly it was huge), and Natalie in the driver’s ed vehicle with head-gear and Princess Leia buns, among other things. But let’s circle back around to the magnificence that was Sam Rockwell’s performance as his character Eric Knox reveals himself to be the bad guy. Ostentatious, sexy, and magnetic all of a sudden, he’s completely transformed from his previous bumbling aw-shucks guy. He dances, he flirts, he simmers. It’s spectacular. I really wish Sam Rockwell had an entire movie just to do that kind of thing in, but then I’d be afraid of getting another Confessions of a Dangerous Mind or something.

So somehow with a movie that has almost no substance whatsoever, I have found a million and one things to talk about, and could go on for quite some time about the campy fun of it all — I didn’t even touch on Bill Murray’s utter Bill Murray-ness — but instead I will leave you with a final thought: “The Chad is great. The Chad is great. The Chad … is stuck.”