Not as solid as part 1, but still great

Rating: 8/10 (23 September 2011)

Very good, but very uneven; Part II is both the campiest and the darkest installment in the series. More specifically - the scenes taking place in 2015 have aged badly, and though they have some strokes of genius, they feel strained and rely far too heavily on cheap make-up effects, Michael J. Fox doing a mediocre job at playing Marty McFly's entire family a-la Eddie Murphy (not a pleasant comparison, I know). On the other hand, the scenes in the alternative 1985 are wonderfully dark and edgy compared to the first film, and all the scenes in 1955 - especially the ones made to correspond to parallel ones from the original - are brilliant. The unsatisfying ending doesn't help the fact the it feels a bit like a tweener, but it still stands as one of the most solid sequels ever made, and holds the first and third movies together well.