BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II (1989)
Tagline: Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads!
(Adventure, SciFi, Comedy) [PG]
Oh, this is heavy, Doc. I mean, it's like I was just here yesterday.
In this one, Marty McFly (played by Michael J Fox) has returned safely from the past to a better future than what he left, but “Doc” (played by Christopher Lloyd), arrives in a flying DeLorean to get Marty to help him prevent Marty’s son Marty McFly Jr. from going to jail. To do this Marty needs to pose as his own son, who has his own issues with a Biff-type character named Griff. Unfortunately, Marty’s efforts lead to a bizarre timeline back in 1985 after Biff is able to steal an Almanac that Marty was going to use himself, to become rich. Everybody got all that?
I think what most people like myself, remember from this movie was all the cool future stuff they came up with. Everything from hoverboards to 3D advertisements, this movie's look at the future is actually pretty awesome. What I personally didn’t remember is how incredibly short a period of time the movie actually spends in the future. Almost in a blink of an eye, we are back to a crazy version of 1985 where Marty’s mom is no longer with Marty’s dad (part of this was due to Crispin Glover, “George McFly”, refusing to be in BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II). Let’s just leave it at that. I do recall the ending where we see almost everything from a different angle than we got in BACK TO THE FUTURE and it's shot really well.
Acting-wise this thing is top-notch again and I have to give a hats-off to Michael J Fox who plays 3 different characters in this movie. Lea Thompson as Lorraine also does a great job in this but was relegated to very little screen time in this one. It’s also pretty noticeable that the writers had absolutely no plan to include Marty’s girlfriend “Jennifer” in much of anything. Sadly Claudia Wells had to quit acting to take care of her mother who had cancer. So her role was replaced by Elisabeth Shue who was fine, but the whole thing felt a bit off. I will say that in spite of some of these issues, BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II absolutely crushed it at the box office. Many fans even liked it better than the first installment. I wasn’t one of them.
Watching this thing again the storyline doesn’t feel coherent or heartfelt. There is just something missing about this movie in the end result. The middle section that just feels like a big downer which throws this movie off, but it also lacks the emotion of the first installment. They did a great job of wowing us with the scenes from the future, but after that, the rest of the film falls a little flat for me. I do appreciate the effort overall so don’t get me wrong. I am not bashing on this thing, I am just saying why it didn’t hit the marks of the original.
Overall I like this movie and would watch it again just to catch all of the craziness in that future scene, but this isn’t as good as the original. I give BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II a 5 out of 7. The lore and background of the movie in some cases are more interesting than what we got on screen.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF UNIVERSAL PICTURES AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
A look around the series...
BACK TO THE FUTURE
BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III
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