Not bad by movie standards, but bad by Matrix standards.

Rating: 8/10 (25 August 2006)

Movie quality is a relative thing. While Reloaded isn't utterly terrible, it's by far the worst of the series.
The plot is Reloaded's strongest point. It would be rather pathetic for the movie to have a bad plot, after all; it's simply picking up where the Matrix left off, and it's rather difficult to mutilate the storyline of the original movie THAT badly. Without giving away too many spoilers, let's just say that there are enough plot twists to keep you guessing, not an overload to simply annoy you, and the very end has a couple nice ones which will make you want to see Revolutions.
The original Matrix movie wasn't just about action, although that was a major part of it. There was an almost philosophical touch to it all, especially with the dialog of Fishburne's character, Morpheus. While Reloaded has a bit of that, it makes certain that you realize this movie is 99% about the action. And that's a problem, because the action in this one is not up to par. Oh, the choreography is great and all, but fights get rather repetitive when, for example, literally about 40% of the fight between Morpheus and the Agent is slow motion. Neo versus Agent Smith(s) is repetitive as well, and most annoying is the slow motion once more for one simple reason: Neo and the Agents are CGI in many scenes, which would go unnoticed if they didn't show it in slow motion and zoom in on their plastic-toy-like faces! Basically, technology gets in the way of what could otherwise be decent action.
Acting in Reloaded, while not quite as good as the original in a way that is difficult to explain, is still quite satisfactory. Dialogue is good as usual. These and the plot would all bring up the movie's grade enough to counteract the low "Action" score if Reloaded could put less emphasis on action. Granted, its plot makes that more difficult; the original Matrix had much more time in the real world despite never visiting Xion, while Reloaded takes place almost entirely in the Matrix, where the action is. Nonetheless, unless you don't mind a barrage of annoying special effects, it simply distracts too much from the better parts of the movie. A good movie, but a bad Matrix movie.