Back to the Future: The Complete Trilogy
January 2003 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

Time travel has served as the basis for innumerable stories and a large number of movies, but the topic has seldom been handled with more wit and ingenuity than in this popular series of movies. In the first one, we meet the two main characters, Marty McFly, a guitar-playing high school student with a penchant for skateboarding, and Doc Brown, a lovable mad scientist who is fascinated with time. Doc has made a DeLorean sports car into a time machine. When it gets up to 88mph, it will transport itself, and its occupants, to the past or future, depending on the settings. In an effort to escape some terrorists, Marty is sent back to the night his parents first kissed, and he and younger Doc pool talents to devise a plan to return him "back to the future."

The movie is a rare combination of teen flick, science-fiction thriller, and period satire. It is impeccably cast, with Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd ideal as Marty and Doc. Lloyd divulges, in the extras found with this set, that he modeled his character on Leopold Stokowski. Think about it: the frizzed white hair, the grand hand gestures. It works. Above all things, the movie is sweet in a non-saccharine way. The main characters are all lovable and the viewer quickly grows to care what happens to them. This rare movie really works for the whole family.

Since it was so successful, Back to the Future was followed by two sequels. These were shot back to back. Back to the Future II shows what happens when one of the bad guys comes back from the future to win massive amounts of money by betting on sporting events. He already knows the outcome, so he cannot lose. This is a dark film and the least successful of the three. Director Robert Zemeckis admits this, noting that he had a hard time editing II while still shooting III. The final installment sets things right again as Marty is transported back to the Wild West, 1885. Doc meets the woman who can keep up with him (Mary Steenburgen, in a most appealing role), and Marty manages to hold his own against the villains.

Since a large percentage of the cast and crew were able to participate in all three movies, there are few bumps from one to the other. They really succeed as a trilogy, seeming somewhat like a very long miniseries. The first one works on its own, but the last two depend on viewing the first to make complete sense. It seems right, then, that Universal chose to release all of them in a single three-DVD case, one per disc.

The video transfers are smooth, clean, and crisp. Seen on a widescreen HDTV set, these films really look like movies, dropping any sense of "video." Contrast is excellent, colors are true, and definition is good to superior. Likewise, the sound, originally Dolby 2.0 Surround and now remixed into Dolby 5.1, is masterfully recorded and reproduced. Both orchestral and pop music cues have richness, presence, and snap. Sound effects are impressive, and the surround channels are used intelligently. They are pretty active a lot of the time, but never detract from what’s going on up front.

The extras are a mixed bag. Each disc contains extras pertinent to the particular film on it as well as some more general material. There is a commentary on each by producers Bob Gale and Neil Canton, as well as discussions with Zemeckis and Fox. There are outtakes, many very funny, as well as deleted scenes, mostly forgettable. Rounding things out, there are music videos from Huey Lewis and the News (excellent), and ZZ Top (weirdly effective but not sounding so great), a running "making of" documentary and period documentaries, and a few other surprises. Perhaps it is churlish to complain, but I would like to see more extras on the topics in the movies. Warner’s Insomnia, for instance, had a documentary dealing with the insomnia that plagued the main character. Why not a documentary on time travel? Or one on alternate universes, an effect that is said to happen when the time-space continuum is altered? Documentaries of this sort would expand viewers' knowledge outside the narrow confines of the movies themselves.

It’s a small point, however, for Universal has provided stellar transfers of these three movies, packaged them attractively, and offered them at a price point that would have bought only one movie three or four years ago.

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