Back to Back to the Future

Updating my music library, I bumped into the Back to the Future trilogy soundtracks and promptly put them in my mp3 player. Listening to Alan Silvestri's excellent scores is like meeting an old friend; I enjoyed the movies when they first came out (and I was young) and had a great time watching them again with my kids a couple of years ago (they loved 'em, too).

The music brought back scenes and lines from movies, and suddenly it struck me: these movies were actually a lot better than 99% of the stuff that passes as youth entertainment today. Robert Zemeckis was always one of the better blockbuster directors, and his ensemble did a wonderful job. OK, I dig the Caribbean pirates and the hobbits and all that as much as the next idiot. But the BTTF trilogy relied on clever plotting, hip dialogue and slightly weirdo characters (Doc Brown!) instead of effects overkill. And the three movies are not just Movie 1 and its two sequels; both part II and part III have their own personalities. The surprisingly bleak visions of BTTF II and the sweet Wild West fantasy of BTTF III easily survive on their own.

The movies may have been blockbusters aimed at a non-discriminating audience, but at the same time they exhibit wicked intelligence and, well, dignity, for want of a better word, e.g. the moral dilemmas of part II and the delicate love affair in part III.

Deliberately risking that I sound like a granddad: they just don't make 'em like that anymore. Great Scott - that was entertainment! Now did my DVD's have the director's comment track...