It’s not rare for second entries in famous sci-fi movie series to go down as highlights — just ask “The Empire Strikes Back,” “Aliens,” “The Road Warrior,” or “Terminator 2.” But, in the case of the “Back to the Future” trilogy, that’s not quite how things shook out, as 1989’s “Back to the Future Part II” is the least well-received installment by far.
Sitting at 63% on Rotten Tomatoes, with 40 positive reviews and 24 negative ones, the first sequel to “Back to the Future” brought back Robert Zemeckis and co-writer Bob Gale, yet critics found that the duo couldn’t quite recapture the magic of the original film. Some major critics did like the movie — such as Roger Ebert, who admired its chaotic nature, writing admiringly that “‘Back to the Future Part II’ is an exercise in goofiness, an excursion into various versions of the past and future that is so baffling that even the characters are constantly trying to explain it to each other” (via RogerEbert.com).
Others, however, found that the goofiness in question didn’t ultimately cohere into a film that was truly satisfying on its own. Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum, for instance, wrote, “By the end, you may feel that you’ve just sat through a feature-length commercial for both part one (which has to be seen to make this sequel comprehensible) and part three (a trailer for it literally ends part two), along with a host of other consumables.”
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