worse than the first

Rating: 2/10 (19 June 2003)

My wife and I reluctantly went to see this as we both disliked the first one (her dad however loves it).
Ugh. What a waste of time and money. This movie has virtually nothing going for it. I've read how great the fight scenes are. I thought they were way too long, there were way too many, and for all the money they spent on special effects, they were obviously CGI. I've seen video games with better CGI.
The "philosophical" element to the story is vastly overstated. This same theme (are we in reality or living inside someone/something else's dream/reality/virtual reality) has been handled with far more insight and thought in many other places (especially in literature) - heck, even in the original movie it was better and Matrix wasn't particularly good (but better than this). This was not "deep" or particularly insightful either. Somehow many people were confused by the interaction with the Architect. Um, Neo makes one of 2 choices - whoopie!
Primairly the movie seemed an excuse to do more CGI and capitalize, read "make money," as a sequel to a big money original. The story went nowhere. The whole "plot" could have been quickly and efficiently handled in about 15 minutes literally. Grass grows faster than the plot progresses, what little plot there is.

The acting is also poor - Keanu does his best "brooding" performance which always comes off as being stoned or constipated. He should have ended his "acting" career after "Bill and Ted." The remainder of the cast isn't worth talking about - even if they are better actors, the script gave them nothing to work with. I never felt the human characters were as "scared" as they kept claiming they were.

Blech! This is not sci-fi and sure as hell isn't science fiction - this is special effects for the sake of making money. Even then, the SFX went on way too long to get any enjoyment of that. How many times can one watch Keanu do his limited "kung fu" action or leap through the air the same ol' way he's done 400000 times before?
You couldn't pay me to sit through this stinker again.