Back to the Future III

Great Scot! Writer/director Robert Zemeckis and his sidekick Bob Gale have taken a quantum leap backward, not only in time, in this concluding episode of the popular time-travel series. If you recall, the closing of the quite entertaining Back to the Future II left young Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) stranded in 1955, while his mentor Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) wound up in 1885. Thanks to a letter posted 70 yrs. ago, Marty learns that the Doc is living happily as a blacksmith in the Old West, and has no plans of returning to the present. Unfortunately, what the good Doc doesn't know is that a lowlife named Biff Tannen shoots him in the back a week after he deposits the letter. Ergo, with the aid of the present Doc Brown, Marty travels back to the fledgling town of Hill Valley, circa 1885, and adopts the name "Clint Eastwood." Together, the boys concoct a grand plan to get the DeLorean sports car/time machine up to the requisite 88 m.p.h. for traveling through time--with an empty gas tank. I won't reveal how it's accomplished, since this is the best part of this otherwise slow-paced western. Both the jokes and the imagination are tame in III compared to its predecessors, and the love affair between Doc Brown and Clara Clayton (Mary Steenburgen), while cute, is not strong enough to be the central "action" of what has heretofore been an action-packed series. Libraries which own the first two installments will probably want to pick up the conclusion, since people who didn't like II will probably enjoy this, and vice versa. (R. Pitman)