Here we sit, grizzled and pandemic-worn, already five years beyond 2015—the dazzling, neon-lit vision that Doc Brown and Marty McFly drive to in Back to the Future Part II in search of [question mark?????]. With the gift of hindsight, this crossroads in real and cinematic time generates much hilarity, as it means that in 1989 (the year the film was made), Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg were pretty sure that just twenty-five years in the future we’d have flying cars and bionic high-tops and robot Michael Jacksons would bring us all of our nanomilkshakes. What a coupla bozos! The coolest pieces of technology I have in 2020 are a windshield scraper with a mitten attached and a $400 flashlight that I’m told some people use as a “phone.”
But let us examine.
We open in a garage. It is 1985. Marty McFly, having just returned from going back to the future once, is caressing his Jeep in an unpleasantly erotic way when Elizabeth Shue shows up. Sensing Marty is in the mood, she’s all, “Shue-d we intercourse?” and he’s like, “Well, I kind of had a side thing going here with my Jeep, but I GUESS.” (Hey, quick aside: Maybe if Elizabeth Shue is in your movie, don’t name her character “Jennifer”? I already think that eleven out of ten blondes from the ’80s are Jennifer Jason Leigh, and this is not helping. I don’t come down to where you work and name David Niven’s character “White Flavor Flav”—GOOGLE DAVID NIVEN AND TELL ME I’M WRONG.)
Marty’s acting a little weird, so Jennifer’s like, “Is everything all right?” Marty glances around furtively, catching a glimpse of the shadow-shrouded, reanimated corpse of Crispin Glover watching him from behind a screen door, as if to say, “I am in your house and I have your mom.” “Yeah, I’m great!” Marty lies.
They’re just about to tongue face when VROOOOOOOM, out of nowhere, HERE COMES DOC BROWN WEARING PHYLLIS NEFLER’S FOURTH-BEST SILKEN BED CLOAK.
“BLRRBLRRBRRBRRRRRBRBBBBBBRRR!” Doc explains, “MARTY! YOU GOTTA COME BACK WITH ME!”
“Where?”
“Back…to the FUTUBLLRRRRBRBRBRBRBRRRR!!”
When Marty expresses concern at not having been able to tongue Jennifer, like, at all, Doc Brown says, fine, they can take her to the future too. Marty and Jennifer, you see, have to drive to the year 2015 to stop their horrible toilet children from going to prison and ruining everything. (Yo, just a thought, but I kind of feel like it might be time to let this genetic line peter out? Marty’s really the only borderline competent one out of three generations. Pick your battles.)
When they get to 2015, Jennifer is like, “Why am I in this flying garbage car?” and Marty goes, “Uhhh, Jennifer, ummm, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re in a time machine.” So then, of course (WOMAN) literally the only thing Jennifer can think of to do when confronted with the fucking miracle of time travel is to babble incessantly about her wedding. Doc Brown is like, “WHO IS THIS TERRIBLE PERFUMED YAPPER I THOUGHT THIS WAS A BOY MOVIE,” and immediately blasts her in the face with a shut-up ray. “She was asking too many questions,” he tells Marty. “No one should know too much about their future.” Also, I thought dragging a lifeless corpse around would really speed up our important mission.
Not to worry, though, because then Doc and Marty literally throw Jennifer in the garbage.
It’s raining outside, and Marty is like, “Ew,” but then Doc is like, “Hold up—just wait five seconds and it’ll change, because I have the rain memorized in the future for reasons unexplained.” Doc gives Marty some electric shoes and this terrible future-jacket, and tells him to go to a nearby diner and pretend to be his own son and then a man named Griff will come in and ask him a question. “Say no, NO MATTER WHAT.” If Marty fails to say no, no matter what, “this one event starts a chain reaction that completely destroys your entire family.” Yo, is this really a situation that justifies the use of a technology as fraught and risky as time travel? One family has kind of a crappy time for a few years? That’s your emergency? Reminder: Marty and Doc go on to fuck up this “mission” so egregiously that they endanger the fabric of time and space itself. Cool. Worth it.
The future is sort of like the present but more bitchin’. Like, they still mail things by having a literal guy pick them up and carry them from one place to another (LOL), but the mailbox has a COMPUTER ATTACHED, so, impressive. Everyone is wearing wacky pants, the gas station is a robot, and all the cars look like logs of dook. Also, instead of skateboards they have these things that are exactly like skateboards except 400 percent more dangerous. It is just a trip, I tell you.
Marty heads to Café ’80s, which is an ’80s-themed cafe where all the patrons are dressed up in “vintage” ’80s clothes. (Uh, you know people don’t actually wear period costume when they go to novelty restaurants, right? I also don’t dress like a toucan when I go to the Rainforest Café.) Their special today is “mesquite grilled sushi,” which is just crazy, because who has ever heard of such a thing!? Only in 2015!!! Marty runs into Biff, who is old now, but not too old to call Marty a butthead.
Then another Biff comes in! Except it’s not Biff, it’s GRIFF, Biff’s grandson! He looks exactly like Biff, just like Marty looks exactly like his own son, because apparently this universe has that Lady and the Tramp disease where all the boy babies look like the dad and all the girl babies look like the mom. “Genetics.” Hey, I have a question. Who’s the Biff of Marty’s generation? Who’s Griff’s dad? Does he look like Biff too? Or does the Biff skip a generation? Doesn’t anyone in this world ever fucking notice that there are only, like, four guys?
While Griff yells at Biff, Marty takes a sec to get clowned on by Elijah Wood and some other terrible urchin. Just then, Marty Jr.—who is a shambling simpleton, for reasons unexplained—comes in for his afternoon bullying appointment. Griff and his hench-griffs offer the customary 2015 pleasantries, inquiring after Marty’s scrote, etc., and then try to persuade him to do this mysterious crime that’s going to end his days. Old Marty, listening from his hiding place behind the counter, is appalled to discover that his future son is a “complete wimp” who can’t even say no to a large, violent gang of Lost Boys extras with mercury poisoning. For shame.
Luckily, Griff tosses Young Marty over the counter in a murderous rage, so Old Marty is able to do a switcheroo, hop up, and take the place of his wimpy, terrible son. And double luckily, Griff calls Marty “chicken” almost immediately, triggering the ancient warlock’s hex moste foule that causes Marty to morph into ULTRA-MARTY. He now has the strength of both a teenage boy and a chicken.
Marty punches Griff in the tooth and then steals a little child’s hoverboard, which she probably got for her birthday, and zooms away. The hooligans chase him, but Marty is the lithest and craftiest hoverboarder of them all, so he wins. Then, the character of Griff, along with this entire save-Young-Marty-from-making-a-horrible-mistake story line, is abandoned and NEVER SEEN AGAIN.
Instead, Marty goes to the antique store and buys a sports almanac, determined to take it back to 1985 so he can become a billionaire and eradicate chickens. Doc is like, “BRRRRLLRRLBBLBBBLLBLBBLLLBLLBLBL, YOU DILDO, NO SPORTS ALMANACS IS THE NUMBER-TWO RULE OF TIME TRAVEL!” (The number-one rule of time travel, as far as I can discern from time travel movies, is to never, ever use it to correct any of the catastrophic sins of history, such as by killing Hitler or giving a machine gun to every enslaved person in the antebellum South, but instead mainly just try to pass your history report and hornily scam on babes.) Marty, however, does not care about the fabric of space-time; he cares only for diamonds and rubies.
Just then, the cops find Jennifer’s corpse in the garbage, scan her DNA, and get the address where Future Adult Jennifer lives with Marty and their garbage kids. They drop her off there, which is hella dangerous, Doc explains, because if she meets her future self it could “unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum.” It was totally worth it to bring her, though! And thanks, by the way, for having literally two female characters in this entire movie—one of whom spends it either comatose in the garbage or yapping about wedding dresses, and the other who’s trapped in a sham marriage being abused by a sweaty gargoyle for sixty years.
Old Biff overhears Marty and Doc talking about the time machine, so he follows them to Jennifer’s house and then steals the DeLorean, along with the sports almanac, while Marty’s just wandering aimlessly around in the street for no reason. Biff drives back to 1955—he doesn’t understand basic words and phrases, but he can intuit how to use a ramshackle time machine?—and gives the sports almanac to Young Biff so that Young Biff can become Rich Biff. Then Old Biff comes back to 2015, puts the time machine back, and sneaks away like everything’s cool.
Now, here’s my question. If Future Biff gives the sports almanac to Past Biff, and Past Biff uses it to get mega-rich, then doesn’t Future Biff turn into Rich Biff? How does he go back to the same regular Hill Valley where Doc and Marty are searching for Jennifer? Wouldn’t he instantly transform into Rich Biff? And doesn’t that Hill Valley not exist anymore? And, like, at some point in the Rich Biff timeline, shouldn’t Rich Biff have to travel back to 1955 to give the almanac to Young Biff? But where would Rich Biff get a time machine? TIME TRAVEL DOESN’T MAKE SENSE, AND I THINK WE SHOULD MAKE IT ILLEGAL.
Meanwhile, at Jennifer and Marty’s house, Young Jennifer is hiding in the closet and learning tons of boring secrets. For example, “About thirty years ago,” says Lorraine (who’s really supposed to be at Rich Biff’s velveteen sex casino right now, but okeydokey), “[Marty] tried to prove that he wasn’t chicken and he ended up in an automobile accident…that accident caused a chain reaction that sent Marty’s life right down the tubes!” Specifically, he injured his hand, and therefore never had the chance to teach Black people how to play rock and roll! Quelle horreur!
Then Middle-Aged Marty comes home and we see that he is beige and ineffectual, like a puddle, or a dry chicken breast (JUST KIDDING, MARTY, OH MY GOD, PLEASE KEEP IT TOGETHER). At this point, you assume that stopping Old Young Marty from injuring his hand, thereby making his family hella pathetic, is going to become one of the objectives of the movie, but it’s not. In fact, as far as I noticed, it’s never mentioned again. I guess, once Marty and Doc fix the whole Rich Biff situation, the McFly family is just left to wallow in mediocrity forevermore? Which, don’t get me wrong—I AGREE WITH. If time travel ever becomes a reality, I don’t think its primary utility should be for middle-class white families to erase the minor consequences of their own incompetence. But couldn’t we get some resolution here? Anywhere?
Anyway, then Flea’s big face appears on a screen to cyberbully Middle-Aged Marty into doing some illegal money business. Marty’s boss immediately notices the money crime and fires Marty via one hundred faxes (because in the future, they still send things by fax, just less efficiently). Then Old Jennifer comes home and sees Young Jennifer and they both scream and nothing comes of it, even though Doc said it could potentially END THE UNIVERSE, because the internal logic of this movie is nonexistent.
Doc, Marty, and Young Jennifer go back to the past, and Doc vows that he’s going to destroy the time machine “and tackle the other greatest mystery of the universe: WOMEN.” Yes, I can understand why you think of women as a great mystery because if the gender composition of this movie is any indication, you have never talked to one.
Doc and Marty abandon an unconscious-again Jennifer in public for a second time, this time just dumping her limp body on her porch. Marty goes to his house and discovers that a completely different family lives there! And Hill Valley has been transformed into a lawless wasteland full of bikers, tanks, slackers, neon bail bonds, and toxic waste! And everybody worships Rich Biff, “Hill Valley’s number-one citizen and America’s greatest living folk hero!” Marty swings by the Biff Museum and learns that Young Biff used the sports almanac to win every single sports bet in history, and then used the money to buy Marty’s mom, and uses Marty’s mom as a place to keep his penis. Bogus.
All of a sudden, Billy Zane comes out of nowhere, like Billy Zane does, and bonks Marty on the head and puts him to bed in his mommy’s scarlet boudoir. When Marty comes to, he thinks he’s back at his regular house, but instead, OOPS. SEXUAL MOM. After remarking upon the size of his mom’s cans (attention, men: YOU DO NOT ALWAYS HAVE TO WEIGH IN), Marty comes face-to-face with Rich Biff for the first time. Rich Biff is mad because Marty is a lazy bum who is supposed to be in Switzerland, and Biff has invested many Biff-bucks in Marty being in Switzerland, so WHY IS MARTY HANGING OUT IN BIFF’S SEX-CLAM!?
Here commences a scene that I found so traumatizing as a child that I believe it rerouted the development of my entire worldview. Biff calls Marty a “butthead, just like his old man was,” and Lorraine is like, “Don’t you dare speak that way about George! You’re not even half the man he was!” and says she’s going to leave Biff once and for all, and then Biff throws Lorraine violently to the high-end sex-linoleum and sneers, “Who’s gonna pay for your cosmetic surgery, Lorraine?” And Lorraine, gesturing to her magnum jugs, goes, “You were the one who wanted me to get these things. IF YOU WANT ’EM BACK, YOU CAN HAVE ’EM.”
Okay. Now. When I first saw this movie at age…seven?, I misunderstood Biff’s next line so egregiously that it has traumatized me for life—such that, despite having seen this movie multiple times since 1989, I never noticed until now. What Biff actually says is, “I’ll cut off your kids,” an effective threat because Lorraine is a devoted mother and Marty is a hapless butthead who can’t even be in Switzerland properly. Solid leverage. But what seven-year-old Lindy thought Biff said was, “I’ll cut off your TITS.”
BECAUSE THEY WERE JUST TALKING ABOUT HER TITS IN THE PREVIOUS SENTENCE, YOU KNOW??? CAN I EVEN BE BLAMED?
Anyway, if you want to turn your little girl into a wet-blanket feminazi killjoy, just make sure that, once in a while, a male character in one of her beloved PG movies uses the threat of sexual mutilation to keep a female character trapped in a physically, sexually, and emotionally abusive relationship for life! It works!
Lorraine opts to stay with Biff (which made way more sense when it was her tits she was going to lose, not Marty’s trust fund, TBH), and tells Marty that his dad is dead. Marty barges in on Biff while he’s getting sensual with babes in his hot tub hot water machine to ask him where and when he got the dang sports almanac, and then Biff just reveals his entire sinister scheme for no reason and then tries to murder Marty. Doc rescues Marty in the DeLorean, beefs Biff in the face, and they fly to the middle of Back to the Future I to yoink the sports almanac and stop a shitty person from becoming rich (because woe betide us all if THAT EVER HAPPENS).
Okay, so then there’s a whole bunch of malarkey wherein Young Marty number two runs around trying to slip his little fingers into Young Biff’s warm, almanac-filled butt-pocket, while avoiding Young Marty number one, Young Lorraine, and Young Crispin Glover’s Reanimated Lawsuit Corpse so that he doesn’t accidentally ruin time again (like you give a fuck, you cavalier goofball!). He finally gets the almanac, drops some sandbags upon Biff’s goons, killing them instantly, loses the almanac again, gets the almanac back again, and then drowns Biff in manure again, killing him instantly.
Then Joe Flaherty shows up with a special delivery: it’s an advertisement for the next movie! Then time marches on, killing us all eventually.
RATING: 5/10 DVDs of The Fugitive.