Don't be fooled

Rating: Null/10 (27 September 1999)

The hype from this movie was huge. From its surprisingly huge box office to internet fan sites, to constant gushing by friends and relatives, I thought this was a can't-miss.
For me, it missed.
1. They give away the essential secret/premise very early on (there are other revelations of course, but the whole matrix thing gets exposed very early). I thought it would've worked better to keep it mysterious to bouy the next complaint.
2. It dragged in the middle. Big time. Practically nothing happens. no tension. nothing. A bunch of dialog explaining "the rules". If they held onto the mystery a little longer, that could have kept this dead part a bit more interesting. During this 70 minute dead spot, all I could think of was how I had to go to the bathroom.
3. Even with all that explaining, it still gets a little confusing, and there were many questions to be asked of the writer, along the lines of "Why didn't they just instead of ?" The answer was "To serve the story, not logic."
4. The last 20-30 minutes of this movie really rock. I think this explains why so many are ga-ga over this film. It just rips out of its sleepy middle and smokes right through to the credits. I (and many others) liked Episode One for the same reason - it leaves you breathless, forgetting that most of the movie was pretty tired.
But the difference between ep one and this (and why I liked ep one better) is they broke up the middle with a pod race. Here there's nothing like that.