Worth seeing.

Rating: Null/10 (26 May 2003)

Not overly impressed with the story this time around. The dialog drags in a couple of spots.
However, I got many visceral, physical reactions watching this film. Chills, tension - gripping the armrest tight, dizziness from the sense of motion even sitting 3rd row from the back; adrenaline rush, heart racing, endorphin rush at the climax of some of the action sequences, laughter.
About that laughter: the sound effects were GREAT in this one, hilarious in places. Think "Three Stooges", but subtler. Some may think that would be a non sequitur in what is otherwise such a dramatic film, and that's exactly why it works. The one-liners are lots of fun too...Agent Smith gets a few of the best ones. There are some gruesomely cool morphing effects as well, which gave me the creeps every time I saw them.
Thinking back to the first Matrix, there wasn't a whole lot of storyline (quality, rather than quantity). There were major plot points, then a lot of tension and action between those points. Story wise, I'd like to see them go back to that for the third film and dispense with the too-many undeveloped subplots. But the new humor and sound effects? Keep 'em! Action, camera work, and special effects? Stunning, fantastic; absolutely perfect.
As for the scenes which remind you of other sci-fi flix, I saw them as tributes to those films. The one spot where Neo looks computer-generated for about one second may have been on purpose. If they wanted Keanu's real face visible all the way on that shot, with their resources and technical expertise, they were perfectly capable of doing that. I saw it not as an error, then, but as an interesting special effect. Of course I could be wrong. Maybe the filmmakers will weigh in on this at some point.
Overall you're in for a wild ride. Well worth seeing. 8/10.