# Critical issue about "Back to the Future"

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-issue-about-back-to-the-future/594600>\
**Category:** Cafe Society\
**Created:** [August 30, 2011, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-issue-about-back-to-the-future/594600 "2011-08-30T07:39:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 44

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**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\
**Post date:** [August 30, 2011, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/critical-issue-about-back-to-the-future/594600/44 "2011-08-30T18:16:39Z")

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Oh god. You HAVE to start a blog, **dougie** , you do.

> [@Unabashed rant: What I object to about specific movies](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unabashed-rant-what-i-object-to-about-specific-movies/41770/26):
>
> With this in mind I went to see _Back to the Future,_ and had one too many straws put on my back.  
> Specifically: these elements each irritated me just a little bit:
> 
> 1. The movie opened on a filthy laboratory which had obviously been abandoned for a week.
> 2. Fox’s character was a snide little smart-aleck, the likes of which would, or should, get his teeth knocked out early on in the real world. In one scene, he pays as much attention to the infuriated high-school principal as he might to a blank wall.
> 3. At one point he hitches a ride (on skates) by holding on to the rear bumper of a police car. This may show Spielberg’s contempt for the police, but it’s a foolhardy and dangerous stunt that could even have put the stuntman’s life in jeopardy.
> 4. At Fox’s home, he finds out, not only has his father’s employer used Fox’s family car (without permission, presumably), but has wrecked it. And he treats the family, whose car he has just wrecked, to severe verbasl abuse in their own home! Sounds like something I might read about in _The Daily Worker._
> 5. Huey Lewis and the News (billed in the opening credits, so I was at least forewarned) played one of their songs at one point. I stayed out in the lobby until it was done.
> 6. The topper was the old man (Christopher Lloyd) with Fox in a mall-parking lot; a VW bus full of maniacs approaches and they fire on Lloyd with sub-machine guns.  
> As I have noted elsewhere, it isn’t the existence of negative elements in a movie that irritate me; it’s the combination of the six, and the apparent use of these elements to appeal to the viewer. Why would I want, for example, to see Arnold Schawrzenegger (in _any_ movie) gun down helpless people with a howitzer, or whatever, unless I condoned murder myself?  
> The six items in _Back to the Future,_ put together, pushed me past the point of tolerance. Without a word to anyone I left, just after the sub-machine-gun attack, and went home, lest I lose my tempter in the movie house and run the risk of being thrown out or arrested. (As for the family that recommeneded the movie to me: about two months after IU went to see it, the father died. I went to the funeral. _This_ sure enough was a low point. :(:(:(:()

This alone is gold. LOVE the detail about the father who recommended it dying.

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