Back to the Future II (1989) - User Reviews

Sequels are well known for being generally awful, and mostly this is due to the lazy practice of scripting them as a simple re-tread of the original film.

Back to the Future 2 takes this weakness and turns it into a strength by taking the cliche as literally as possible: for a great part of the film we re-experience actual moments from the original film from a slightly different perspective, as Marty McFly and Doc Brown travel back to 1955 again: same week, same town - and have to go to great lengths not to bump into their selves and ruin everything they achieved in the first film, whilst tying to achieve a quite separate aim. The beauty of this is not so much the cleverness of merging old scenes with new (or carefully re-shooting them, no doubt) although it *is* clever and brings forth a grin every time, but more in getting to see more of the backstory of the original film as 'our' Doc Brown and Marty McFly continue to interact with all the rest of the 1955 cast who are of course blissfully unaware that there are two Marty McFlys and Doc Browns running around the town (Christopher Lloyd manages to out-do himself yet again, and any scene he is in is all the greater and funnier for it).

Of particular note is Thomas F. Wilson as Biff Tannen - we get to see a lot more of his characters personality (nasty though it may be): how he lives, how he thinks and to what depths he is willing to go to protect his own interests (basically, murder) and get his wicked way with the unwilling Lorraine.

Oddly this is generally all that stays in the memory of Back to the Future 2, but there's so much more: for a start, the film really begins with Doc, Marty and Jennifer traveling *forwards* in time to 2025, a world where cars can fly, skateboards hover, food is all dehydrated, fax machines are surprisingly still in use and the 80s have achieved something of a retro-cool status, all beautifully done very badly indeed with max-headroom style waiters in the form of a 'Bad'-era Michael Jackson and Ronald Reagan (who was the butt of possibly the best joke in the original film), a wonderfully dire 3D Jaws shark in a nod to producer Steven Spielberg, and various well-thought nods to the previous film in set design and other details.

This is where unfortunately we get hit around the head very hard indeed by a lot of Pepsi product-placement (even becoming integral to the script), much moreso than was in the original film, and probably because Back to the Future 3 was shot back-to-back with this film and being set in 1885 didn't have much scope for including any fizzy-drink references.

We're also treated to more of Biff Tannen (and it is a treat) - Biff in his middle-age, Biff as a grandfather, and Biff in an alternate version of his 1985 self where he pretty much runs a state of America (and runs it into the ground) due to a slightly complex set of events featuring himself throughout all points in his life. This is nevertheless wrapped up in a water-tight explanation and plan of attack by Doc Brown, a rarity in time-travel films: despite complexity this one has been thought out fully and makes perfect sense! It also foreshadows a few events to come in the next film, and nicely skews all the existing backstory of 1985 and Marty McFlys life and family before he started time-travelling.

This is - and I won't attempt to explain how - what prompts our heroes to return to 1955 in order to put time back on track. Once this is achieved, everything wraps up nicely and the film could easily have ended here (much as the original could have - and did - until they hurriedly shot a new ending) if not for a wonderfully dramatic and even scary chain of events that sees Doc Brown catapulted through time leaving Marty McFly alone in 1955 without a time-machine of his own... but thankfully with the gloriously over-the-top Doc Brown of 1955 to take him in again (much to his absolute horror), setting us up nicely for Back to the Future 3.

Back to the Future 2 is both a sequel and a middle-film of a trilogy - something that often spells doom, but which in this case is fully avoided here. It's a gem.

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