BACK TO THE FUTURE, PART II
A film review by Jeff Meyer
Copyright 1989 Jeff Meyer
[Don't worry, kids, no real spoilers lurk within]
Actually, about the only spoiler that I will reveal about BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II is the fact that the story is left with a cliff-hanger of an ending, and is continued in BACK TO THE FUTURE PART III, coming to a Sequel Auditorium near you next summer. I remember people walking out of the LORD OF THE RINGS in an extremely peeved mood due to the annoying surprise that the film only covered half of Tolkien's trilogy; I wouldn't have that on my snow-white conscience, so, Happy Holidays. Now you can go prepared. (I must admit that I didn't hear too much grumbling on leaving BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II; I assume the knowledge of it being continued is either fairly common knowledge, or the film is more satisfying that LORD OF THE RINGS, installment or no. (A rather back-handed compliment...))
So, how is it? And, of course, the really *original* question: how does is stand up to its predecessor? Well, first of all, the high points of BACK TO THE FUTURE were a) a clever use of time-travel machinations (many already familiar to me through the wonders of science fiction and comix), b) Christopher Lloyd's Doc Brown, c) some cute humor, and d) Alan Silvestri's charged-up theme music. And I liked the car. However, the characters were mostly pastiches, keeping it at the level of an above-average exercise in comic plotting with an under-used plot device -- time-travel. A satisfying movie, but not something I was anxious to see over and over.
Thus, I have to say that BACK TO THE FUTURE II pretty well meets up to my expectations, because they weren't abnormally high in the first place. The cleverness and time-related in-jokes are pretty good, and the time-travel theme holds together if you don't think about it *too* closely. (See assorted heaps of rec.arts.movies articles for examples of intense chrono-temporal reflection.) No real plot shocks or surprises There's a sense of rushed urgency in this film that was absent in the first BACK TO THE FUTURE film, and this gives the film an edge (or at least becomes reminiscent enough of IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE to simulate one); however, what it adds in suspense, in takes away from the one enjoyable friendship in the first film, the one between Doc Brown and Marty. Doc seems to be in the picture merely to hustle Marty from time-period to time-period, and (except for one pleasant sequence where Brown bumps into himself), gets to show very little personality; his main contributions to the film are the better historical jokes. (From the previews of Part III at the end of the film, this may be remedied in the concluding film.) Michael J. Fox seems to be trying to beat Cary Grant's record of double-takes in ARSENIC AND OLD LACE, and while he's adequate, he's no Archie Leech. (The idea of Cary Grant as the protagonist in a slightly-altered version of these films really appeals to me...) Everyone else is a cookie-cutout character (Biff especially); they also toil who only serve the plot, etc.
So, is it worth seeing? Depends how well you liked the original BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II is more of the same; the good news, in these sequel-riddled days, is it's not worse than the same.
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
INTERNET: moriarty@tc.fluke.COM
Manual UUCP: {uw-beaver, sun, microsoft, hplsla, uiucuxc}!fluke!moriarty
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews