An Excellent Finishing Touch

Rating: 9/10 (2 November 2005)

The first "Back To The Future" film was an all-time classic that needs no introduction. Its quasi-scientific approach to fantasy (where time-travel is explained except where doing so makes the plot impossible) gives it just the right touch for a mainstream audience. The second and third parts of the trilogy were filmed simultaneously, so they need to be viewed as a whole, even if they were not released as one; this obviously hurt II's performance with the critics and at the box office.
The strength of the series has always been as a buddy film: Marty and Doc have a close friendship that few of us ever get to experience. They completely trust and rely on each other, and they only argue without ever really fighting or even hinting at betrayal. They can count on each other in a way that most of us can't, and accept each other's individuality. It takes a lot of trust to take the risks that Marty and Doc take for each other.
Each movie of the series has involved the same characters in different time settings, and that itself is fascinating. Biff Tannen is now Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen, what one would expect a survivalist ancestor of the 1950s schoolyard bully or 1980s workplace bully to be. George and Lorraine McFly are now Seamus and Maggie McFly, a far more mature and industrious, and far less dysfunctional, couple that we would expect of first-generation immigrants of an era when there was too much work to be done for one to bumble around like George or become embittered like Lorraine. This "Mr. Strickland" is not a school principal, but a Marshall, and he is neither intimidated nor fooled by Biff/Buford. Doc Brown is back as himself, setting up shop as a blacksmith and relying on his superior knowledge to see his way through that era.
Even the humor is transplanted. Marty gets to "learn" how to shoot on a practice range that looks like his favorite "Outlaw" video game and dazzles the locals. The chase scene is transplanted, but skateboards don't move well on dirt, so he is lassoed. The space-time continuum is threatened yet again, this time by Doc's love interest, Clara (played by the well-cast Marty Steenburgen). Doc and Marty are again ridiculed when they share their visions of the future with the locals ("automobiles?"), and we once again find our heroes having to figure out a way to get "back to the future." No one can say that this film or either one before it jumps any sharks, that's for sure. The story was amazingly true to itself throughout all three films.