BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II

* * ½

STARRING: Michael J Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Thomas F Wilson, Harry Waters Jr, Elizabeth Shue

1989, 107 minutes, Directed by: Robert Zemeckis

Description: Inventive, perhaps too clever sequel to the popular 1985 comedy about a high school kid (Michael J. Fox) who travels into the past and has to bring his parents together (or lose his own existence). — Amazon.com

Time travel stories can become mightily confusing and this film, which follows immediately on the events chronicled in Back to the Future, becomes incredibly convoluted. Nonetheless, despite the plot confusion there is some fun to be had as Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd travel to several alternate futures to patch up problems that they have caused themselves - albeit directly or indirectly.

Back to the Future Part II extensively employs the alternate time-line gimmick, one which has been used often in literary science fiction, but seldomly in its celluloid sibling . . .

However, the film ultimately relies on too many cheesy make-up routines in which characters play their older (and female!) selves which makes it not exactly the best movie in this series . . .

(Followed a superior sequel, Back to the Future Part III in 1990.)
 

• Read our review of the Back to the Future Trilogy on VCD.
• Read the script.