Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Michael J. Fox, Trini Alvarado, Dee Wallace Stone, Jeffrey Combs
Have I Seen It Before: Sure, but it was years after the release before I finally did.
Did I Like It: There’s something oddly comforting about Michael J. Fox finishing up his leading-man in features career by both returning to his roots (a high concept piece at the behest of Robert Zemeckis), letting an indie-darling take their first crack at a big studio film (Jackson, who’s a few years away from getting legally married to the Tolkien estate), and ultimately landing with an overlooked gem.
The film winds up being a perfect fusion of all those elements. Fox brings the charm that made Marty McFly a likable presence, despite ultimately being a Ferris-Bueller-class jerk for most of those films. Had health not intervened, we would have been in for decades more of Fox aging and evolving, but never quite losing the ineffable qualities which first made him a star. We’re still getting that—I refer the curious to the latest season of Shrinking—but not with a name above the title on a poster.
Jackson bridges his early themes of horror (Braindead (1992)) and dark, violent secrets of (Heavenly Creatures (1994)), coupled with an eagerness to embrace the digital effects revolution that he would wield to full effect with The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) and from which he’s only been recently set free. I first saw the film five or six years after its release. The effects of both the Judge (John Astin, one of the more convincing ghosts of the silver screen) and Johnny Bartlett (Jake Busey) worked pretty well then, and against all odds I’m now watching a film thirty years after the fact, and the effects still hold up.
And—not to knock any of Jackson’s other efforts—it’s less than two hours long. Brevity, be the soul of wit.