Impressive, but premature to judge

Rating: 9/10 (15 May 2003)

Spoiler Alert Saw MR last night (proof in a negligible spoiler: the Merovingian sends a program to an attractive female via a piece of dense chocolate cake with shaved white chocolate on top--I don't think that's been in any leaked footage). What surprised me was how easy it was to obtain tickets the day before, quite unlike the hoopla over the Phantom Menace. Suffice to say the facility of obtaining tickets to these movies was in inverse proportion to their quality.
I won't belabor a lengthy review, but I can say I was pleasantly surprised--after reading the Slate and NY Times reviews I was prepared to see another Phantom Menace meltdown and it wasn't like that at all. The Zion scenes aren't as turgid as forecast, the kung fu is cool (and of course it's a little over the top--after all, Neo can FLY now!), and there's enough of a "mind job" that I want to go see it again just to review the dialogue with the Oracle and the Architect... there's a lot to figure out here.
My main comment, though, is that this is obviously not the full story, and that to judge this movie in isolation, before seeing Matrix Revolutions, is WAY premature. It's a very entertaining flick on its own, but whether the Wachovskis have really pulled off something great in this film will depend in no small part how they bring the whole franchise to a conclusion in the next.