Back to the Future II (1989) Review

Back to the Future was never intended to have a sequel but after its huge success they not only filmed a sequel but a third film as well, filmed back to back on a $40 million budget. The film gained $332 million worldwide making it the third highest grossing film of 1989. Part II is directed by Robert Zemeckis and stars Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd, reprising their roles of Dr. Emmet Brown and Marty McFly.

A lot of people say that this film is their favourite in the series but in my opinion, this is my least favourite. To me, part II just doesn’t have the same charm I and III has, not only that but the story is very uneven and unnecessarily jumbled, so much so they have to spoon feed you information so people who don’t have a clue what’s going on can better understand and as someone who did know what was happening it felt irritating.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t anything good about this film, in fact I just listed all the problems I had with this film, so everything else after this is just positives. We again have a fantastic cast playing great characters, with all the time travel and alternate time lines we get to see a fairly wide range from the actors. The humour is spot on with plenty of reason to laugh.

The interpretation of the future was also really interesting, of course we now know it’s wrong because it’s the past now but it was great to see how accurate it was, and with how unique and different it was from many other interpretations of the future it was great to look at. The costume and set design was brilliant and looked fantastic on screen. The visuals of this film was perhaps one of its strongest parts, from 2015 to alternate 1985 everything looked amazing, the special effects were also well done by the always great industrial light and magic. All intertwined with the once again excellent Alan Silvestri score which, while not as memorable as the first, is still fantastic and suits the film well, building atmosphere and tension.

While on the note of visuals, we saw a return of some of the great visual comedy which spiced up the humour from the first film, we also see the return of a lot of shots used in the first film which does tie them together.

Overall Back to the Future is a great exciting film with the actors getting a lot of chance to shine. Although messy it’s still a lot of fun with hilarious and edge-of-your-seat moments all accompanied by a fantastic score.

7/10