Could you please pass me the ice pick so I can stick it in my eyes?

Rating: Null/10 (19 May 2003)

This movie represents the worst-spent 138 minutes of my life.
I was not hoping for new awe-inspiring special effects. I was not sitting on the edge of my chair waiting for the Neo vs. 100Smiths scene or the freeway scene. I was anxious for the next step in the STORY! Apparently the entire budget for this film was spent on effects and the paultry remaining funds went to plot development and dialog.
Even the effects were amateurish. The fight scenes made WAY too much use of the freeze frame and rotate 360 degrees shot. I counted 6 of these in the first 30 minutes and then gave up. And Zion...the last human city...the place of our rebirth....give me a break. It made me think of a cheap cross between Alien and Waterworld. It was just plain tacky.
The directing on this film was some of the worst I have ever seen. Lawrence Fishburn is a GREAT actor. So I can only imagine how much effort it must have taken to turn him into the over-enunciated baboon we see in this film. His dialog deliverance reminds me of William Shatner at his absolute worst. The speech Morpheus gives to Zion is, well, just plain cheesey. I had flashbacks to the "Can you dig it" speech given by Cyrus in the 1979 film, The Warriors. His speech is followed by a primitive rave scene that looked like it should have been left on the cutting room floor of Blade II, where they obviously found it.
All in all, this was quite possibly the biggest letdown in a very long time. I hope the dingbat brothers wake up and realize that what made their film great was the intriguing plot, and not the cheeseball fighting.