Fourth of July weekend was a big one for the Rubin clan—at least regarding the multiplex. (It was also a big weekend for almost getting hit by a wayward firework that launched itself at me, then veered away from my Michael Jackson muscle tee/half-shirt combo just in the nick of time, but that’s another story.) It’s when I saw Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and Speed—for which I was on crutches and also SUPER HIGH, though presumably my family didn’t know that at the time. But as great as those movies were, they were all just run-of-the-mill popcorn movies that were still in theaters when our annual All-Family Movie Tradition rolled around. Which is what made Back to the Future so special.
Summer matinees are about escape—from your daily grind, from the searing heat outside, even from time itself. Robert Zemeckis knew that, and catered to our needs on every level possible, from the visual to the literal. For kids, there was slapstick and a cool, relatable protagonist who gets to be a hero; for adults, there was the ultimate nostalgia trip of rewriting the past; for everyone, there were was an ’80s zeitgeist frappé of Libyan terrorists, Pepsi Free, Calvin Klein, and a revenge of the nerds that blew the actual Revenge of the Nerds out of the water. Even in its darkest moments, BTTF was relentlessly upbeat, and Huey Lewis made damn sure you knew it long after you left the theater. It wasn’t long after 1985 that action movies began to dominate the multiplex during the holiday weekend, and family comedies went on the wane. But that hadn’t happened yet: Marty and Doc might not have needed roads where they were going, but they made sure we could all come along. —Peter Rubin