Review of Back to the Future Part II (1989) by Allen G — 31 Mar 2016

For a long time I adamantly defended this film as the best of the trilogy but having now seen them all one-after-the-other, it's clear that you just can't beat the original. This is close enough though, okay!?

The plot of this film remains one of my favourites- a 1980s imagining of their future, i.e. my present. What would my mum when she was my age think about the future (i.e. the present, where I am now the age that she was)? IT'S CONFUSING BUT JUST GO WITH IT.

Pagers really took off (misfire) and cars do too (misfire) and double ties are all the fashion (unfortunately, also a misfire) but man, doesn't the 'future' look cool? Sure, 2015 didn't really turn out to be like that but this film was always going to serve more as a time portal into the past than into the future and the pagers alone give us a good old sniff of the 1980s.

The real problem with the BTTF sequels is how highly-iterative they are of the original. In this (whilst it's well-done), much of the plot of the first film is simply re-done. There's just something a little lazy about that that I can't quite get past.

Further, there's a lot going on here- certainly too much, and it can make the film feel a little jumbled. Again, though- let me return to my moto of IT'S CONFUSING BUT JUST GO WITH IT.

The energy is bigger than ever and again there's the sense that this film was really going for it and, to me, it succeeded. if the story is solid and the passion is there, then I think you can overlook some of the bumps in the road (you know, if you even need roads where you are gong).