Entertaining, but most certainly not brilliant

Rating: 6/10 (16 May 2003)

I went into the theater expecting an entertaining film, and I got my wish. However, if you go in expecting something challenging mentally, you will be sorely disappointed. Hopefully you've seen the first Matrix already, though, so you know better than to expect something witty.
On the plus side, the special effects were amazing. They most certainly improved upon the original style, though there was an awful lot of weird physics that was probably not intentional (unlike the scenes where the characters purposely utilize the properties of the matrix). The scene with the cloned Smiths was a little silly, but all in all the movie had a number of good fight/action sequences. The music/sound was very well done, too, with only a tad bit of cheesy trance thrown in for good measure. Most of it flowed well with the film, and if you ate up the first soundtrack you'll probably be stoked to hear this one as well. The best thing about the Matrix sequel (and what puts it better, in my mind, than the original) is the way in which they tie everything together in a neat little package, working in both the mysticism and technology of the matrix.
Now for the negatives. The dialogue is the worst dialogue I've heard in a long time. I think even George Lucas could've written better dialogue, and if you've seen any of the recent Star Wars films, you'd wonder how that was possible until you saw Matrix Reloaded. Yeah, sure, you can shrug some of it off as Agent Smith being his usual robotic self (since he is a computer program). And there's even one very, very excellent line in the film ("It's like wiping your ass with silk."). However, if you look at the lines that came from the ship's operator, you wonder how comic relief became so painful. When you listen to the romantic crap going on between Neo and Trinity, it should make you genuinely wonder how whoever wrote this isn't stuck writing soap operas. Hell, even Morpheus' speech isn't all that great, though it's given a very key placement right at the start of the film (though what follows is five minutes of my life I wish I could take back. Seriously, who decided to put a pointless music video in the middle of this movie?).
Worst of all, the ending ten minute sequence with the Architect is the most asinine part -- remember that "neat little package" I just wrote about? Well, the creators of the Matrix do their damnedest to obfuscate the simplicity of it as much as possible by having the architect use a large number of consecutive words rarely heard in the English language. They then complicate this further by throwing in as much technological mumbo-jumbo as they can fit. The reason for this is simple -- to make stupid people think they are watching a smart film. I was amazed by the number of people who were like "Yeah, the ending totally messed with my head, man." Whatever. Nevermind the fact that all the philosophy that was so shallowly explored in this movie had already been talked about, from literature centuries old to fairly recent films like "Ghost in the Shell"...what really slays me is that people think this is a deep film. If it really asks any questions you haven't thought about before, you must not think very much. And they don't even bother to touch deeply on the issue...instead, the cause/effect and free will/destiny philosophical arguments are used simply as a facade to make people think that the Matrix is more intelligent than your average action flick. While this may barely be true, it can't stand up intellectually to most dramas even Hollywood puts out.
Go for entertainment, and enjoy the stunning visuals and audio to the max by seeing it in the theater. But please, please, please do not try and tell me there's one shred of intellectual stimulation in the Matrix. It's all been done before...just read some cyberpunk, watch some anime, and hell, I could even recommend some books from as much as 2000 years ago that offered better insight into the same questions the Matrix Reloaded asked.