What's all the fuss about?

Rating: 7/10 (29 December 1999)

Having finally seen the Matrix after hearing people sing its praises for months, I confess I'm a bit baffled as to why it's so popular. It was a good film, yes -- slick visuals, cool effects, nice fight sequences, interesting ideas -- but nowhere near a *great* film, and certainly undeserving of the brou-ha-ha it's been getting.
Great science fiction films are original, they provide a new visual or mental language for the viewer or present old ideas in new ways. Films such as Blade Runner, Alien, Star Wars: A New Hope, and 2001 are examples of that sort of filmmaking. The Matrix is not. The visuals are an uneasy mesh of Blade Runner and Alien, the idea that our world is an illusion was most recently explored in the far superior Dark City, and the mythology smacks of Star Wars. Even though the movie does provide plenty of eye candy, it pays homage to the point of theft.
The movie is also overlong, divests most of its plot twists in the first 30 minutes, relies too heavily on extended slo-mo fight scenes (How many spent rounds do we need to see floating slowly to the ground?), and frequently trips over its own internal logic. But if there is a weak point around which all else seems insignificant, it's Keanu Reeves. His pipe cleaner body and sunken chest don't fit his role as kung-fu master, and when he strikes a 'manly' pose he just looks silly. His acting talent is on par with his other work, which means he says "whoa" and looks blank a lot. It's a dangerous thing to base a movie around a non-entity like Reeves -- even when his character has his (cliched) is-he-dead-or-isn't-he scene, I couldn't bring myself to care.
In short, it's a fun movie, a nice action film posing as a sci-fi film, but don't rent it if you're looking for something that will make you think, or something that you haven't seen before.