Back to the Future is my favorite movie. As someone who has adored that film for his whole life, my expectations for the musical were sky-high. While that could disqualify me from a balanced review, I believe it’s precisely my deep connection to the original that allows me to see where the adaptation shines and stumbles.

While watching the performance of Back to the Future, I realized there are two ways of embarking on an adaptation of a beloved property. One path is a reverent and faithful take on the story, an homage with necessary changes made to adapt to a different format while staying true to the themes of the original overall. Think Legally Blonde, Mean Girls, Beauty and the Beast, the list goes on.

The other path takes the original content and parodizes it. These adaptations don’t so much take the source material seriously, instead opting to send up the originals as fodder for audience laughter. This relies on the crowd’s familiarity with the source material to create moments rather than faithfully recreating the original moments with a fresh musical spin on them.

The problem with the latter is that it assumes that the audience is intimately aware of the source material. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that many watching this production are unfamiliar with the tale of Marty McFly, “Doc” Emmett Brown, and the former’s trip to the past with its vast and, in some cases, unsettling implications on his parents’ future relationship. Sometimes, Back to the Future: The Musical is so trusting of its audience’s familiarity that critical plot elements turn into rambling inside jokes from the company.

Take the character of Doc Brown, played in the North American touring cast by Don Stevenson. The version we saw in the 1985 movie classic, portrayed by Christopher Lloyd, was a real person. He was human, flawed, and relatable. Stevenson’s Doc resorts most often to physical comedy, flailing to and fro across the stage and squeaking out lines of familiar dialogue, which, if one didn’t already know by heart, would be unintelligible.

“Next Saturday night, we’re sending you back to the future,” Doc Brown says in the 1985 film. However, in the stage production, Stevenson rambles the line out before flopping around the stage, trying, successfully albeit, to garner a laugh from the audience. That line could have been an applause moment where the audience roars at the reproduction of an iconic moment. Instead, it’s played for a cheap laugh before quickly being thrown aside. It’s a distinct difference in tone that creates a feel of parody instead of homage, and it’s the weakest point of an adaptation that has so much to live up to.

Or take Marty’s father, George McFly. Crispin Glover’s version, with all the actor’s eccentricities and quirks, is a sweet, awkward individual who is hopelessly in love with Lorraine Baines, his future wife. Burke Swanson’s version of George is a very odd duck, but not in an endearing way. There’s no way this version of George could exist in real life. In the most plain language possible, the musical version of George is a caricature of a nerd without subtlety—parody instead of homage.

Musically, Back to the Future: The Musical is unremarkable. Other than two notable “bangers,” most of the heavy lifting in this production was done in 1985 by Huey Lewis & The News. I liked the sound of “Gotta Start Somewhere,” performed by Cartreze Tucker’s Goldie Wilson, and “Put Your Mind to It,” sung by Caden Brauch’s Marty McFly. Other than that, the musical’s best moments are in songs that exist in the original movie. Earth Angel, Johnny B. Goode, and the duo of Huey Lewis classics “Back in Time” and “The Power of Love.” The rest of the musical numbers were forgettable, leaving my brain as quickly as they entered.

While this may seem like a pan, that’s really only part of the story because when Back to the Future: The Musical hits its top speed, you’ll see some serious s###. The last 35 minutes of 1985’s Back to the Future are the best ever committed to film. I’ll die on the hill. Come at me.

In those moments around the Enchantment Under the Sea dance, George overcoming his school bully, and Marty’s improbable quest to get back to the future, the musical adaptation decides to flip from parody to homage. Somehow, despite the hours of slapstick comedy and unrelatable adaptations of characters, I found myself getting emotional! What the heck?

Perhaps it’s more a commentary to the source material, the best movie of all time, but when the musical needs to hit home, it does. Successfully. If only that success could extend to the first act and the first half of the second. If only the musical’s book and its company would commit entirely to the earnestness of its finale. I suspect the creative minds behind this production chose the tongue-in-cheek, self-referential path out of love for the original film. I get it. I love the subject matter too, and all I wanted was a faithful retelling of Back to the Future—homage over parody rather than the wild swings the musical takes between the two over its runtime.

If I could go back in time and work with the creative team, I’d advise them to slow down and trust the source material. Remember that we love this story; all you have to do is adapt it. Unfortunately, I don’t have a flux capacitor-packed, plutonium-powered DeLorean, so, at least for now, the flawed musical is all we’ve got. However, even with its flaws, Back to the Future: The Musical eventually taps into the nostalgic heart of the original story, delivering enough thrilling moments and familiar beats to warrant a visit.