Tedium Beyond Belief

Rating: 7/10 (27 August 2001)

I really cannot understand the hype & gushing praise for this sfx/cgi gloated film.
The story is routine - a contemporary mix of Men In Black, Tron and a shedload of other "10 seconds to go before the world is destroyed" movies.
The principle idea of a make-believe world called The Matrix, a world where we all live totally oblivious to the fact that this world is totally artificial and controlled by machines, could have been immensely interesting in the hands of a better set of scriptwriters & directors. In any case this kind of story isn't a million miles away from Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy, a book far more interesting than this rubbish.
For the sake of a good story the Wachoowski Brothers (writers & directors) went all gooey for lots of cgi to distract the viewer with the many plotholes and poor character development. The story simply gets in the way of a good sfx. And on and on it goes, each cgi trying to out "wow" the previous effect to the point where you wonder whether this is nothing more than an expensive computer game.
People went wild when we saw our heroes climb up walls, jump huge rooftops & dodge speeding bullets in slowmo. But so what? I feel we have become so blaise about cgi that only our imagination limits us to what we think is possible. And the cgi in this film no longer had the same kind of "jaw dropping" effect as one witnessed in Star Wars, Terminator 2 or even 2001:Space Odyssey.
Our superheroes, Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishbourne & Carrie Annie Moss, looked like bit players compared to the computer bits making up the over indulgent CGIs. Fishbourne tries to come over all cool & hip, but looks fairly average when asked to do anything remotely interesting; Reeves acts just like...well...Reeves, with that usual "no one's home" expression & designer jackets. While Moss hops in & out of the movie when it looks as if the going's getting a bit tough for Reeves, resulting in an ending ripped straight from Luc Besson's 5th Element!
This film lives off its own hype & marketing, and already looks dated. Once you've viewed the film more than a couple of times and got used to the sfx you then want to look for more depth only to find that its only the sfx that holds the film together.
BAD!
**/*****