Terrible film, does wrong everything the Matrix did right!

Rating: 2/10 (9 June 2003)

This is a lackluster film at best - and that's if you don't try to compare it with The Matrix. The Matrix combined an excellent and philosophically interesting plot (extreme skepticism & philosophy of mind being particularly relevant), excellent special effects and action sequences with deadpan acting that actually worked beautifully. Unfortunately, none of these aspects that made the original film great carried over to The Matrix Reloaded. Reloaded is filled with important sounding ramblings that really have very little philosophical merit (and I say this with a B.A. in philosophy -currently in a PhD program). The action sequences fail for the following reasons: 1) they are too long. The sequences go on for such length that I was bored... bored! By an action sequence! 2) The special effects are overused (bullet-time, etc.) to the point that they seriously detracted from my enjoyment of the effect and of the action scenes in general. 3) Ahh hell... I'm tired of writing: the action scenes are ridiculous - terrible direction, predictable (morpheus hangs off edge of truck by his fingers - twice in the same fight!). Finally the acting here has taken a turn for the worse along with the script. Some scenes are overly long (zion rave comes to mind), and many are unnecessary and slow down the pace of the film. Oh, and BTW the ending of this film isn't really an ending at all - it just cuts off mid plot point to force you to see the third movie. Overall I give this film 3/10 - go rent the original instead.