The Back to the Future trilogy

IMDB entries are here, here and here.

Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is a 17-year-old whose life is a mess. His parents are eccentric, to put it mildly, his siblings annoying, and he's constantly late for school. But he's friends with mad Professor "Doc" Brown (Christopher Lloyd), an inventor who has come up with an ingenious invention. Doc believes he has discovered the secret to time travel, through customising a DeLorean car into a time machine. One night, in an empty car park, Doc demonstrates his invention to Marty and somehow manages to send him 30 years into the past, to 1955. Here, Marty meets both his mother and his father, and must ensure that they meet each other and dance at the high school prom as planned, so as to preserve the "space time continuum" and make sure that he's born.

The first film of the trilogy sets up everything to come, but bizarrely enough, it's only after seeing all three films that all the details throughout the trilogy make sense. Part II - in which Marty must first of all go into the year 2015 to stop his son being arrested, and then travel back to 1955 to sort out yet another mess - makes a lot more sense after you've seen Part III, in which he travels to the Wild West.

Michael J. Fox - who replaced original lead Eric Stolz - is just perfect as McFly and Christopher Lloyd suitably hilarious as Doc. The entire supporting cast, who for the most part appear throughout the trilogy, give solid support at all times and the audience is left without any doubt that every single person involved in this trilogy had a great time doing it. All three films are lively, charming, filled with great performances and just plain fun. It's a trilogy that you have to have seen...and you have to have seen it on the big screen.

Laura Watson