So this week I got a copy of The Hurt Locker in blu-ray from Netflix. It was a film I wanted to see in the theaters, but sadly I missed. Sunday night I almost selected it as my Sunday Night Movie, but I was in a more whimsical mood and didn’t want a film that was going to cause deep thinking or such on my tired and stressed brain. (I had worked Overtime at the day job and I was in serious need of just brain downtime when Sunday night rolled around.) So I wen through my DVD library looking for something that suited my suddenly fickle mood.

Back To The Future II seemed perfect. I had purchased the entire trilogy as a box set last year, but I had watched only the first film on DVD. It was time to watch the second film. A movie I had not seen since it was in the theaters.

For those not in the know, the Back to The Future franchise is about Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and his adventures with a time traveling Delorean built by local eccentric scientist Dr Emmet Brown (Christopher Lloyd.) The first film is about Marty traveling backwards to when his own parents are teenagers and his adventures as a fish out of water as an 80’s teenager in 50’s America. The writers quite properly had the time machine non-fucntional for the majority of the film saving them from dealing with the inherent paradoxes of most time travel stories.

The Second film picks up where the first film left own, with Marty traveling into his own future at the behest of Dr Brown because something has to be done about Marty’s kids. This film plays more with the idea of time travel and some of the well known dangers involved. The cast is perfect in their role and I was always impressed the most by Thomas F. Wilson who not only played his character at different ages but played different version of his own character as the time line changed and created new realities.

The special effects were outstanding for their time, 1989, but compared to todays dazzling wizardry the smoke and mirrors simple do not work. The composited images are clearly lit different from the background plates and this would be acceptable in a made for ScFi (sorry SyFy) channel presentation today. However they are not bad just dated.

This was what I need for an under two hour no brain stretch of a movie.