An Indulgent Threequel That Never Quite Arrives

Rating: 4/10 (28 July 2011)

This is the point where the dam breaks for the BTTF trilogy. Without the innocent, loose grasp of reality present in the first film, nor the amusing, campy glimpses of the future seen in the second, there's really not all that much to look forward to as this bad western lolls its way toward the finish line. Marty McFly and Doc Brown still make for strong core characters, ones we desperately want to see come out ahead, but they've got their arms full here with a stale set of recurring gags, a base premise that's thin at best and a hammy love story that doesn't really bring anything meaningful to the table. Where the original was able to effortlessly skirt the holes that speckled its plot, the saga's grand finale bowls straight through them with no regard for the repercussions, leaving audiences skeptical. A needless leap across both genre and era, at least it has the dignity to close the door behind it when the credits queue.