"You're not thinking fourth dimensionally, Marty!"
Unsatisfying.I really wanted this movie to rock, but alas, it doesn't.
There are some interesting bits, as Marty (Michael J. Fox, duh), now stuck in 1955, has to go back to 1885 to see Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd, still), who's been sent back when the time machine got zapped by a bolt of lightning. Marty gets a 100-year-old letter from Doc, telling Marty he wanted to be left there, and gave Marty the location of where he hid the time machine so Marty could get back to 1985, then destroy the thing. But Marty finds out Doc was killed a week after the letter was written, so he finds the time machine where Doc left it (in 1885), and heads back to save him.
But it's a bit of a letdown. Most of the action takes place in the old west, and while it's interesting to see ZZ Top as a band in the old west, or Marty meeting his ancestor Seamus McFly (Fox, in a dual role) and Biff's (Thomas F. Wilson) ancestor "Mad Dog" Tannen (Wilson as well), the heart of the first (and even the second) movie seems to be missing. It's nothing more than a standard Western film with better special effects. The gimmick doesn't seem to work as well the third time around.Plus, I'm not big on Mary Steenburgen's character.