domino harvey wrote:
I thought Elisabeth Shue's crazed double-takes and winsome whining were a riot and I was pretty disappointed that she was mostly discarded for the rest of the series after the first forty-five minutes of the second part-- I mean, she manages to upstage Christopher Lloyd's theatrics! I'll concede that the first film has a great premise and execution, but the sequel is such a strange and complicated riff on the first that the audacity of its existence looms large.
The whole scene with Shue in the car early on is a riot.
Part II is definitely the finest of the three for me as well. For one thing, I love the way that it doesn't linger on its own effects shots; the domesticated scenes in 2015 are so silly and breezy and story-driven you barely notice how expensive everything must have been. Not only do I greatly enjoy the oddball surrealism of the future segment and the ingenuity of the paradox material (and I think Zemeckis is right about it being a unique comment on sequels -- the audience comes for more of the same, and in this case they literally get it in the 1955 sequences), I think the cliffhanger that closes it is one of the best endings in a Hollywood movie, at least of the last few decades.
I differ with Domino on Part III, though, as I think it's a compelling story that splices back in a lot of the emotional depth hinted at in Part I. Zemeckis said something years ago about being troubled that the original film implies that the people in your life should change in order to deserve your love. I don't quite see it that way, but the Mary Steenburgen / Christopher Lloyd relationship in III feels a bit like he and Gale are trying to compensate for that, since at bottom it's a story about acceptance of a loved one or partner's sheer outlandishness. But I can see how someone could feel that the love story is tacked on and the western elements are too conventional, etc.
For me, though I do love it, the first film hasn't aged as well as the sequels -- though I suppose you could make an argument that by steeping the first scenes in the 1980s, the movie establishes its period the same way it later establishes the 1950s, 2010s, etc.