All style, no substance

Rating: 4/10 (20 May 2003)

An expensive, confused, confusing, muddled mess. How did it all go so wrong?
*Spoilers*
What's with the Neo flying scenes? I have to admit to a loud snort of laughter the first time that came up. No excuse for that sort of nonsense whatsoever.
The special effects are great, but at the same time, the fighting sequence between Neo and numerous Agent Smiths seemed so dull, and seemed to be there *only* to showcase (very obvious) CGI effects, which was never the impression I had from the first film. And, as somebody else mentioned, he does the Superman thing at the end anyway.
The whole "I believe" speech/cave bongo dancing sequence - terrible. And fairly irrelevant. And while I'm on it, the whole Zion thing seemed to be confused - they couldn't decide whether to go with hi-tech, white laboratory style computer efficiency or Victorian engineering. Hey! Let's do both! What a mess.
The sequence with Lambert Wilson as the French mafioso-type was well done, and he's always good, even when camping it up here, and the lead-on to the highway chase scene was when things finally got moving, with one of the only fight sequences that was what you could call exciting.
One of my big disappointments was that the whole thing seemed to drag. It had *none* of the zip of the original. I know that having seen the first film that my expectations are maybe high, but it seems to me that it would be impossible to make all those fight sequences look so dull.
I don't know... I'll end up going to see the third one when that comes out having been left hanging (well, that was expected anyway, so no complaints there). ...Even Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving was in the year above me at school) looked bored by the whole thing throughout, when he was such the scene stealer in the original with all that menacing sneering.
Cool shades though.
Overall two out of five. Seriously disappointing.