How to turn an action-pack into a bore

Rating: 2/10 (15 May 2003)

There is something I honestly do not understand about The Matrix Reloaded. This movie has a lot of action, yet it is a bore. How can one manage to do that? There is absolutely nothing extraordinary about this movie. I'm also appalled at the general lack of criticism. In other words, "the movie is 100% the best of all time" or something like that. I believe Jackson's Lord of the Rings suffered from the same problem. Anyway.
I'll say it straight: The Matrix Reloaded displeased me first because of its mystical tangent. The first movie was interesting because you could share Neo's disbelief at the discovery of this "real" world, and how he learned progressively about it. As the ignorant audience, we began with presumptions and had to abandon them along the way as everything unfolded. I'm not talking about surprises per se, only something constructive; a real development, so to speak. I sincerely think there was one in the first movie, despite its flagrant weaknesses.
A good point though is that the makers coherently, in my opinion, treated the idea of Myths. This is obvious in almost every scene, from religious faith to Superheroes. But somehow it didn't touch me. I liked better the more technological (almost cyberpunk) side of the first movie.
On the philosophical side, Matrix Reloaded rates at the level of the schoolboy who's convinced he's got the Big Questions and has to Seek the Answers: as enthusiastic as idealistic, but alas shallow and empty. Taking yourself too seriously is a bad thing, because it eventually amounts to naivete. Making a philosophical movie doesn't require the actors to meet characters that need a definite article in their names to feel mythical (the Keymaker, the Architect, etc.) and so we have to think they got answers or whatever. It's one of the basic rules in writing anything seriously, movie or book: show don't tell. So there was lots of questions within stupid dialogues, and no treatment. Cheap philo, that was.
Visual effects. Maybe this had to do with the fact that I was sitting in the second front row (I was really amazed to find out that most people had arrived several hours before, just like a Star Wars movie you're waiting for after 20 years; the Matrix never deserved such fanatism, in my opinion), but they often appeared less than average. Not counting the fact that you could spot Smith's or Neo's doubles too often for my taste.
All in all, cool fights, some overlong sequences, bad philo, and a Neo, for whom the Matrix is no more a challenge, wandering around until he finally has something to do.
Oh, the French guy was hilarious, but you have to understand French for the full impact to be felt.