I don't know if it's because I've left it for too long since I saw the first part, or whether I'm just not with it today, but I struggled to follow what was going on in this movie.

Don't get me wrong, the acting is second to none, the scenery and the music feel very authentic, and the filming itself is seamless...but the story felt jumpy and there were a lot of characters to keep in mind. The flashbacks were a little too prolonged to be "'flash'-backs", which meant that I wasn't sure whether Vito or Michael was the main character. Is part II meant to follow or complement part I? I guess both - it's like it tries to be both a sequel and a prequel. Another review put it well when they said that it felt like a whole season of a show crammed into three and a quarter hours (and that one may need to be a scorecard of the characters).

Really, I'm being picky, since I expected a flawless film; nevertheless, these things impacted my experience of the movie. Perhaps my expectations were unreasonably high and I'll be able to appreciate it more fully after seeing it again another time. I hope so.