Back to the Future (VHS, 1995)

Very funny movie from the 1980's about a wacky scientist named Doc. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) who invents a time machine, and his young friend Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox). Doc Brown calls Marty and wants him to meet him at a shopping mall parking lot that night. When Marty gets there, he finds out that Doc has built the time machine in a DeLorean automobile. Doc explains that his invention, the Flux-Capacitor, is what makes time travel possible. He shows Marty how the time circuits and machinery work and wants Marty to video-tape his first journey which should only take a few minutes. This time machine works on Plutonium, which he stole from some Lybian terrorists who wanted him to build an atomic bomb for them. All of a sudden the Lybians show up and shoot Doc Brown. Marty barely gets away in the time machine, but winds up in 1955! He tracks down Doc Brown and tells him the fantastic story. Doc thinks Marty is nuts, but when Marty tells him about the Flux-Capacitor, he believes him. Problems have already arisen, as earlier in the day, Marty had already run into both his mother (Lea Thompson) and his father (Crispin Glover). Marty's father is a real closet case and his mother winds up enamered with him. The only way to get them together and avoid disrupting the time continuoum, is to bring his father, George McFly, out of his shyness and come up with a plan to make his mom see him as special and have her fall in love with him. The plan is for Marty to ask his future mom, Loraine, out to a dance where she and his father originally met and fell in love. Marty is going to make an inappropriate advance at her, and George is going to rescue her, and make Marty look bad. But, the local bully, Biff, who always intimidates George, has Marty snatched by two of his followers and locked in another car trunk. When George shows at the planned moment, he finds Biff, not Marty. A real fight happens and George miraculously knocks Biff out and all is put well. A plan to use a lightening strike to generate the power needed to send the time machine back to the future is accomplished and Marty arrives in time to save Doc. Brown. This was a funny and clever movie, with two sequoels to follow.Read full review