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- <text id=90TT1396>
- <title>
- May 28, 1990: All Smiles
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- May 28, 1990 Emergency!
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- CINEMA, Page 88
- All Smiles
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <qt>
- <l>BACK TO THE FUTURE, PART III</l>
- <l>Directed by Robert Zemeckis</l>
- <l>Screenplay by Bob Gale</l>
- </qt>
- <p> For all the hubbub Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and Doc
- Brown (Christopher Lloyd) have encountered--and caused--on
- their voyages, the Back to the Future movies have moved along
- the time-space continuum with easy, free-striding confidence.
- Maybe Marty and Doc (and the rest of us, looking on) have
- suffered momentary disorientations. But director Robert
- Zemeckis and writer Bob Gale have always known where they were
- and, better still, where they were heading.
- </p>
- <p> This concluding chapter in what has turned out to be the
- most delightful and conscientiously made series since Star Wars
- finds our intrepid explorers back in the Old West of 1885.
- Marty is trying to bend history around an inconvenient shooting
- in which it is preordained that Doc will die. Were that to
- happen, of course, everything that has already occurred in
- Future I and II would be rendered impossible. In a sense Marty
- is fighting not only for Doc but also for his own future, which
- now lies in our movie past.
- </p>
- <p> The gags come in every size and shape. Small: Marty in full
- cowboy regalia except for his shoes, which are, incongruously,
- sneakers. Large: an Indian arrow having punctured the gas tank
- of their time machine (still that goofily customized DeLorean),
- Marty and Doc must purloin a locomotive to push the car up to
- warp speed. Romantic: frenetic Doc smitten by love for--who
- else in a western?--Mary Steenburgen's lovely schoolmarm.
- Deliciously anticipated: the appearance of Marty's bullying
- nemesis Biff (Thomas F. Wilson), this time got up as his
- distant ancestor Buford ("Mad Dog") Tannen, the dumbest gun in
- the West.
- </p>
- <p> Future III is all smiles, nostalgically respectful of the
- western genre, serenely sure of the strength of its own more
- immediate heritage and of our affection for it.
- </p>
- <p>By Richard Schickel.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-