Though four years have elapsed since the original, little has changed in the movie, and in fact it starts right where the first one left off – in the driveway of Marty’s house, right after Doc (Christopher Lloyd) has dropped him off after their adventures in time.

The only major difference is that Jennifer, Marty’s girlfriend, is no longer played by Claudia Wells – instead, Elisabeth Shue takes over.

Other than that, it’s pretty much business as usual – except that Doc has returned from the future, and he’s got some bad news. It seems that Marty’s kids (and Jennifer’s – they are married in the future) are getting into trouble, and they need to make sure that they can save them. Thus begins the second episode of the trilogy. What happens when they get there sets the stage not only for this installment, but the next one as well.

Doc sprays Jennifer with some knockout gas, because she’s asking too many questions about the future and that can never turn out good. This, in turn, means that they have to leave her propped up on some boxes in an alley – which will come back to haunt them as the police show up and escort her to her home, thinking she is the Jennifer of the future (their prints match, after all).

But in the meantime, Marty and Doc try and keep Marty’s son, Marty Junior (also played by Fox) out of trouble. It seems that he’s a bit of a wimp, and he can’t turn down a request from Griff, grandson of Biff (both parts played by Thomas F. Wilson), so Marty steps in to set things right.

What happens is that Marty gets into a hoverboard chase, reminiscent of the skateboard chase in the first movie. Afterwards, he buys a sports almanac to take back in time and use to make some money on the side. But before he can return it, he throws it away – right in front of none other than Grandpa Biff, who also overhears he and Doc talking about the time machine.

While Marty and Doc try and rescue Jennifer from her home of the future, before she runs into her future self and causes a rift in the space-time continuum, Biff steals the time machine and takes the almanac back to his past self. But Marty and Doc don’t realize this until they return to 1985, when they return home to find that everything has changed, with gangs ruling the streets and a massive casino that Biff built right in the middle of town.

Even Marty’s dad has been killed (which, we find later, was due to none other than Biff). Perhaps worst of all, Marty’s mom is now married to Biff. So Marty and Doc make plans to head back to 1955 and destroy the almanac before Biff can make his changes – but this means that they will be contending with themselves from the time they were there before.

Confused yet? It’s actually handled quite well, and gets more entertaining as it moves along.

When Marty and Doc get back to the past, they naturally manage to handle things as expected, with some small roadblocks in the way, and Biff even manages to get another car full of manure along the way for posterity. Of course, they recover the almanac, but before they can head back to 1985, a lightning strike hits the flying DeLorean Time Machine and it seems like Doc might not have made it.

Just as Marty is about to break down, thinking that he’s stuck in 1955, he receives a telegram that the guy tells him that they have had in their possession over a hundred years. It seems that Doc has survived, and is living in the Old West. That sets the stage for Back to the Future Part 3.

With all the twists and turns, you’d expect there would be problems along the way, but there really aren’t. The only fault I have with the entire movie is that the part where the original Future Marty lost his composure on stage while he was waiting for his parents to kiss, because it’s like he was fading away, as if they would never meet? That didn’t happen here. Of course, you could argue that that particular thing was now set, and it was going to happen. But since he was there, it’s like it could be affect again – so this Second Future Marty probably should have gone through the same thing. But maybe I’m just being picky.

Keep your eyes open for a young Elijah Wood – he is one of the kids at the video game in the Cafe 80s. This is his first movie role.

Rated PG for intense action.