Decent, but sickeningly overrated

Rating: Null/10 (1 December 2000)

When I saw the trailers for this movie, I was mildly interested, but I was putting in 65+ hour weeks when it came out, so I missed it in the theatres. By the time I rented it, I had heard so much hype about the movie that I was really energized to see it. The movie came as a massive disappointment.
In retrospect, I've decided that it was an okay science fiction film. Absolutely off-the-shelf plot, largely wooden acting (with exceptions, of course), spruced up by a few nice and cutting-edge special effects. Eminently watchable, if one likes scifi and approaches it un-biased.
Unfortunately, it is tough to approach the film unbiased because of the utterly insane amount of hype that followed its release. One of the most annoying things I keep hearing about the film is how new and original it was. I cannot adequately express my opinion of this nonsense without resorting to profanity, but I will try.
As far back as DesCartes, the idea that we may be living a lie and that all we think we know is being put into her head put into our heads by an outside force. Since that time, it has been in almost constant use by science fiction writers. The Matrix plot is neither new, nor even a new interpretation of an old idea. It is simply an old idea.
The acting had its shining moments, but between the actors and the script, there was never really a shot at greatness.
Cinematically, aside from a few very eye-catching shots, the movie descends into a series of largely boring and formulaic slow-motion shots.
The effects? Well, aside from the new (and, admittedly, spectacular freeze-panning effects), they were somewhere at or below the level of episodic television, especially those which occur in the nominal "real world."
Plot holes? Enough of them, and big enough, to drive a fleet of Mac Trucks through. Insanely huge example follows, but, be advised, it does contain big SPOILERS if you don't know the plot. If you don't want the spoilers, skip to the next paragraph. Okay, I warned you. All the humans in the world are tied into this virtual reality to keep them passive while their body heat is used to power a giant evil computer. Why humans? Why waste all that time creating the virtual reality, when they could just use a whole bunch of chained up squirels? I'll tell you why: because the creators had this "great" idea about people stuck in virtual reality, and couldn't come up with a good reason why, so they just slapped something together, that's why.
Perhaps the worst thing about this movie, is that it has ruined a lot of scifi that has followed. Anytime a fight scene features an attempt at actual martial arts choreography, or uses any slow motion in a fight scene, it is decried as a Matrix rip-off (often with the term "blatant" thrown in), as if Kung Fu and over-crank were invented for the Matrix. Even worse is that the technological aspects that the Matrix borrows from scifi canon are now decribed as being Matrix rip-offs too.
Anyway, here's the summation line: this is a watchable, and often enough enjoyable movie, that suffers from being extremely over-valued.