Less heart, but more clever than original

Rating: Null/10 (11 October 2002)

There's something about seeing one's parents when they were your age, that is very moving and powerful. That made so much of the sentimental appeal of the original. That's absent this time - but this movie does far more very cleverly with the whole time machine logic. I kept thinking "how clever" and "wow, how ingenious" throughout the movie.
**** SPOILERS ****
I did think of one logical error - why is it that when the girlfriend sees her future self, she faints dead away (as does her future self) - after much fun/silly spiel about how the universe might implode if this were to occur - and later Marty attempts very hard to avoid seeing himself. However, when Biff goes back to 1955 and sees his former self, there's no problem for either him or his young self?
There's also a slight problem I had in the almanac retrieval. We are to believe that Marty's been locked in the garage for many hours until Biff comes out to drive to the dance. Since Biff is unaware that Marty is in the garage, why can't Marty have simply taken some large object into the back seat with him and hit the unsuspecting Biff on the back of the head with it when Biff sits down in front of him, taking the almanac back?

**** spoilers end ****
That said, this is much fun - spinning out of clever ideas - just not as sentimental or heart-felt as the first.