Back to Back to the future, present and past.

Rating: 9/10 (21 October 2015)

Back to the Future was a big, big hit. Everyone was crying out of a sequel and the team of Zemeckis/Gale made two sequels back to back.
However with Crispin Glover refusing to return as George McFly meant that the story for the BTTF II had to be drastically altered. They went in a complete different direction with just excerpts of Glover used from the original film as well as a double.
BTTF II also replaces Marty's girlfriend with Elizabeth Shue and her role has been drastically reduced.
BTTF ended with Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) taking Marty (Michael J Fox) and Jennifer to the future to sort out his kids. This time where they were going they did not need roads.
Marty and the crew arrive in 21 October 2015. The day this review was written. At the time I saw this film in the cinema 2015 sure felt like a long time away and you really felt that there would be hover-boards and 3D holographic films. I guess Avatar was the nearest we got to it.
Although Marty sorts out his offspring's future it also allows Biff Tannen to steal the DeLorean and a sports almanac and drastically change the time-line to a darker one. Marty and Doc have to go back to the 1955 and the setting for the original film to restore the original time-line.
BTTF II is a fast paced film as it squeezes the plots of three movies in its running time. However by going for a darker alternative time-line some of the charm of the original film was lost which was largely maintained in the future scenes set in 2015. As Fox remarked when the film came out , they wanted the future to be largely optimistic.
My biggest issue always was that sports almanac with all the results of sporting events going back 50 years was an awfully thin book. Was it a prototype Kindle?
Fox and Lloyd have no problems reprising their roles and very much carry on from the original film. The only odd change of character being that Marty gets upset when someone calls him chicken when he refuses a challenge.
Fox has fun playing multiple characters in the film, Lea Thompson also plays her character in different time-lines and Thomas F Wilson is nasty Biff whichever time-line he is in.
The film is a rollicking good adventure and a sequel that is almost shoulder to shoulder with the original. Zemeckis and Gale went on a different direction than many people expected. This is no lazy cash grab sequel. Its a time travel adventure that stands on its own self lacing Nikes and stupendously finishes with the set up to a third film.
However the film does miss Crispin Glover's offbeat George McFly. I felt this at the time I saw the movie in the cinema and my opinion has not changed 26 years later.