Watch the first movie before giving this one a try

Rating: 7/10 (25 August 2005)

Despite the fact that I've never been a fan of Sci-Fi movies, I've always loved "Back to the Future". Only a couple of weeks ago I watched the first movie in the series again and I still liked it as much as I did when I first saw it. Now the second part was shown on television and I was curious about the fact whether I would like the sequel as much as the original version. Normally I don't like sequels all that much because they don't add anything to the story, but this movie is different...
The second part of the "Back to the Future"-movies picks up where the first one ended as we see how Doc suddenly comes back from the future and asks Marty and Jennifer to come with him to 2015 to straighten out the future of the McFly family. After doing so, they return to their own time, discovering that something has drastically changed in their neighborhood. Violence, murder, gambling,... have become common practice in the once so quiet neighborhood. This happened because in 2015 Biff Tannen stole the Delorean, taking with him a book with the results of every sports event from the 1950's till 2000. He gave it to his younger version in the fifties, using it to become incredibly rich. In order to restore the present, Marty and Doc will have to return to 1955 so they can retrieve the book...
Despite the fact that I feared that this would be an easy way of making even more money out of the success of the first movie, I must admit that this isn't really the case. Not only have they added the element of the future and the changed present, they have also added a new part to what happened in the first film. It's true that they have re-used several parts from that first movie, but it's never boring to watch, because they have always used another point of view, instead of just using the same footage. If they hadn't done that, I would probably not have liked it a bit, but now I did.
Once again the acting in this movie was more than OK. The performances of Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd weren't any different from those in the first movie and since I already liked them in that movie, I can only say that I liked them in this one as well. But the other actors like for instance Elisabeth Shue, who got a much bigger role in this movie, were also very good.
All in all this is a very worthy sequel which makes me look forward to the last and final part. The still interesting story, the many new features, the good acting,... make this movie look a lot better than the average sequel. Perhaps interesting to know is that you should have seen the first movie in order to fully understand the second one. That's not always the case with sequels, but with this one it is. I liked that and I liked many other things as well and that's why I give it a 7.5/10.