Heavy on the Sci-fi, and I love it!

Rating: 7/10 (21 July 2008)

Bob Gale, Neil Canton, and Robert Zemeckis did not intend to make a sequel to Back to the Future. The first film ended with Doc, Marty, and Jennifer flying in the Delorean, intent on traveling to the year 2015. This was only meant to be a joke, so when Universal asked them to do a second movie, the writers were sort of in a bind. Robert Zemeckis was not interested in doing a movie about the future, and the writers had no idea what to do with Jennifer during all the action. Despite a possible lack of enthusiasm from Zemeckis and difficulties with the writing, Back to the Future II turned out to be a very fun, but somewhat darker sequel.
In the year 2015, Marty and Doc prevent Marty McFly Jr. from agreeing to assist Griff Tannen (Biff's grandson) rob a store or a bank. During all the madness Marty buys a Sports Almanac, which contains a record of the outcome of every sporting event from 1950 to 2000. It should be the size of a telephone book but it's just the size of a graphic novel. An old Biff secretly steals the time machine and the almanac, gives it to himself in the year 1955, and seriously alters history. Doc and Marty return to a 1985 that has turned into a ghetto. Biff became a millionaire, murdered George McFly, and married Marty's mother. In order to set the time line straight, Marty and Doc have to return to the night of the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance from the first movie and destroy the Sports Almanac.
The crew went crazy with the design of the future. Holograms, flying cars, and floating skate boards all make up the look of the year 2015. This was my favorite part of the movie when I was a kid because it was the most outlandish. Of course they got everything about the future wrong, but who really cares? Now I find myself liking the science-fiction aspect of the story. Returning to the first movie and seeing two Martys and two Docs on screen at once was a brilliant idea. I think the second act of the movie was so dark that it was seen as a departure from what made the first movie so good. The movie does lack the heartwarming feel of the first film, but they brought it back with full force in Part III. If I had one major criticism it would be that it takes too long to really get going. The first half of the film is just exposition for the third act in 1955, and the ending is just a set up for Part III, which makes it less satisfying than the first movie for many people.