A very good movie plus bonus crap

Rating: Null/10 (16 May 2003)

This was a very good movie. It is well worth the money to see it in the theatre. You most likely will enjoy it and appreciate the progression of The Matrix storyline.
Sadly, not quite as good as the first one, but without the "shock value" of the original, there is no way it could be as good. There are some parts of this movie that I just plain didn't like. But instead of taking it out on the movie as a whole, I'd prefer to think that this was a very good 1.75 hour-long movie with a half hour of crap mixed in thoughout. The action scenes are terrific; some of the slower scenes are very interesting, but other scenes are mostly worthless. Here's my advice if you are seeing this movie -- if you find yourself being bored in a scene, go take a bathroom break because the boredom will continue for another 5-10 minutes. You won't even miss anything important to the story.
I also have a beef with the ending of the movie. At the end, Neo does something that should be completely mindblowing, but the event was played down and then we saw a confusing 5 minutes of dialogue followed by a cheesy horror film ending. I would have preferred to see Neo's action played up a bit more and then have the movie end right after that. I think that would really leave people guessing and wanting to see the conclusion.
There were several great things about this movie. I could go on all day about the action scenes and special effects, but I'm sure you've heard it all. Also, there were several new things that were introduced in this movie that really gave breadth to the story and the environment. Finally, though the movie was trying way too hard to philosophize, there were a couple of things that really made me think about my reality.
So to sum up, don't expect the same kind of ground-breaking and thought-provoking movie as the original. Expect a big budget action fest that also has an interesting story and a few slow parts and you will greatly enjoy this movie.