Virtual crud

Rating: Null/10 (28 May 2003)

Who in God's name was in charge of deciding which minds to liberate from the Matrix? I imagined the inhabitants of Zion to be a collection of scientists, politicians, engineers, mathematicians, great thinkers --men and women of strength, sobriety, discipline, and purpose. Looks like they got the Burning Man crowd instead -- a bunch of clowns gyrating underground in the orgiastic throes of bacchanalia, bumping and grinding to a technobeat soundtrack, banging on bongos or gongs like hippies at the beach. Few rave parties last as long as the celebration scene from this awful, unbearably long and joyless ride. "Matrix Reloaded" itself is a kind of SPOILER, but if you are excited about seeing this nonsense, beware of the SPOILER ahead:
The climax of "Matrix Reloaded" involves a scene where Neo discovers that the Matrix was actually built by Colonel Sanders, who then proceeds to give a nearly 20-minute "before I kill you, Mr. Bond"-type speech about the meaning of life, the futility of action, the illusion of choice, KFC's secret recipe, and on and on. He does so by seeming to repeat the same five sentences over and over and over again, in different orders, inserting the words "vis-a-vis" and "ergo" every once in a while to make it all sound smart and logical. I've sat through get-rich-quick infomercials at 2 AM which held my attention better.
The Matrix could turn out to be the first "blender religion," as it's obvious that the Warschauwszchkiyi Brothers just pureed a random sampling of Eastern, Western, Southern, and Northern religions into a chunky spew of impotent hokum - and some meatheads are really buying into this, taking it ALMOST as seriously as the cardboard cutouts that make up the sleepwalking characters in "Matrix Reloaded." There's even something decidedly "Phantom Menace-esque" about all the scenes of political intrigue involving Zion's councils, committees, and chambers of commerce. I half-expected Jar-Jar to pass through frame. And the CG fights suck. Notice how LITTLE Neo resembles Keneau Reeves when his battle against the army of Agent Smiths heats up.
Anyway, the first "Matrix" was interesting, revolutionary, yada yada yada. "Reloaded" is overbaked, self-important nonsense. Absurd. Can't wait for "Revolutions."