Back to the Future Part III (1990)

Genre: Comedy / Science-Fiction / Western

Directed by: Robert Zemeckis

Starring: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Mary Steenburgen

Running time: 119 minutes

Like the previous sequel, Back to the Future Part III starts where the other ended. Stranded in 1955, Marty receives a letter from Doc, who is stuck in 1885 with a broken time machine. Unable to fix it due to the primitive technology in the time period he’s in, he hides it for Marty to find in 1955, along with instructions on how to fix it. The scientist tells his younger friend to do the needed repairs and then go back to his regular life in 1985 without coming for him. As he is about to do what he’s told, Marty finds out that Doc Brown was shot and killed a few days after writing the letter, so he decided to go back to 1885, in the Old West, to save his pal from doom.

In this third part of the trilogy, the franchise started to lose some of its magic and luster in my opinion.

Fox and Lloyd still do a very good job working opposite each other. Mary Steenburgen was also the right choice to play Doc Brown’s love interest. You can actually believe that these two off-beat characters could fall for each other.

I simply find that they tried to stretch things out a little too much with a third movie, diluting the sauce in the process. The western motif was cute, though the sets really looked fake, but the plot dragged on. By the end of it, it offered a nice closure to the series, but it came off as a little too bland for my taste. It certainly pales in comparison to the first two.

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