Shames the original

Rating: Null/10 (6 July 2003)

"The Matrix" was a brilliant film that was almost prophetic of the future in its message to viewers around the world. I could draw parallels between it and Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel set in the near future, "Brave New World." In my book, a film that can be compared to a novel, a great novel, is a film worth watching. "The Matrix", the original, was such a film.
Unfortunately, "Reloaded" isn't. Not even close. First of all, I don't see any elements in the first movie that actually garners it a sequel, one that isn't only unnecessary but also undermines the impact of the first movie. Second of all, "Reloaded" was - gasp - painfully and utterly boring. I slept through the first half of the movie and was only kept awake during the second half because I decided to keep myself awake by chewing on a Mentos.

"Reloaded" was pointless and pretentious in its futile efforts to pass off as an intellectual action movie. Somebody should've told the film-makers that such a formula hardly ever works, and when it does the first time round, they should be counting their blessings and be happy with the state of pinkish health their bank accounts are in. While its predecessor managed to mix quality action sequences with thought-provoking philosophical truths, "Reloaded" fell flat in that aspect. Its action scenes, for one, were too incredible, the special effects so overdone that they appeared fake. And the philosophy part? It was a noble attempt on the film-makers' part, I will admit, but unfortunately, whatever they were trying to convey got horribly lost in the mess of flying bodies and constant sprays of bullets that nobody could actually get what they were trying to put across in the end. One scene featuring some holy person spewing some philosophical gibberish that lasted for about fifteen minutes out of the two-hours-and-something-minutes of the film cannot possibly be powerful enough. After two hours' worth of an assault of the sense of sight which was also practically a lullaby for the brains, one simply cannot really bother to figure out what that man in the TV room was saying to Neo. Personally, I didn't even care.
The plot was also a problem. The love angle between Trinity and Neo was redundant and boring, and the lack of chemistry between Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Fisher didn't help matters much either. It was too overplayed and the time they spent kissing on screen could've been saved for bored members of the audience like me to do more productive things. The mass orgy/whatever scene at Zion was, too, an incredible waste of celluloid and screen time. It served no other purpose, it seemed, other than to please stereotypical male members of the audience. And the rest of the plot... wait, plot? What plot? I highly doubt a plot existed in the first place.
In addition, Keanu Reeves becoming Superman only made me laugh out loud and his usual bland as plain water acting only added to the hilarity of it all. Reeves is a bad actor through and through, but he somehow managed to overcome that intriguing handicap in the first movie. Here, the lack of character development and his lack of anything else to do but fire guns, save Trinity from the evil clutches of the awesome Agent Smith, and fly like Superman, only made clearer his immense disability to say a few simple lines with that tricky thing called emotions. He expressed his love for Trinity, and I thought he was ordering a pizza or asking directions to the toilet. Reeves would be much better off without seemingly complex emotional scenes for him to handle, scenes that would other be handled with ease by a better, more profound actor.
The rest of the main cast, fortunately, were okay, although they seemed to have got slightly more pretentious and annoying. Still, Agent Smith was the highlight of the movie (although that scene with hundreds of him was a huge joke to me), and the direct element that made me stay on and not walk out after I fell asleep for the 20th time. There is just something so compelling about the way Hugo Weaving snarls at Neo and morphs into people that it makes you rather excited to see the kind of havoc he'd be up to next. If there were to be a movie with Agent Smith as its protagonist, I'd definitely pay to see it.
Keep Keanu Reeves out though. And while we're at that, keep the overall senselessness of "Reloaded" out, too.
A sorely disappointing sequel, even worse than what I'd originally expected. A shame to the first movie.