All Smiles

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

BACK TO THE FUTURE, PART III

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Screenplay by Bob Gale

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.

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.

! 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.

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.