Pros and Cons of a decidedly mixed bag

Rating: Null/10 (8 June 2003)

CONTAINS SPOILERS. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Pros:
--Hugo Weaving, who could read the phone book and I'd still watch. The man rocks my world.
--That freeway chase was way cool (but...see the Cons section).
--The chocolate-cake-as-metaphor scene was clever (but...see the Cons section).
--The Keymaker was a neat idea and executed well.
--I liked the concept of choice being just another binary branch in The Matrix (the whole "You've already made the choice, now you just have to understand it" notion), and the notion that all of these branches have all been executed before, including several instances of "The One".
--Loved the sequence where the Zionites ask Neo to bless and protect their loved ones. One of the few moments where I thought the over-the-top religious symbology worked perfectly.
--Keanu's blank stares and lack of range work well for this character, especially this time around.

Cons:
--Every fight scene is about twice as long as it needs to be.
--The freeway chase is about twice as long as it needs to be.
--The Zion orgy is about twice as long as it needs to be. (Seeing a trend here?)
--The Neo vs. 100 Agent Smiths brawl is frankly pointless. For starters, it's brought in at the wrong place in the film (think what a huge thing this would have been near the end, as Neo's trying to get to the Architect). Then, it's got THE worst CGI in the movie, which is honestly saying something (I swear, NOBODY had ever make any disparaging comments about the CGI in SPIDER-MAN again after this scene, because the CGI in this scene is so obvious that you can pick out EXACTLY which actors are real and which aren't). Finally, after all is said and done, Neo flies away from it all, which is exactly what he should have done as soon as he saw a gazillion Smiths rushing out to him. I love Hugo Weaving, he rocks my world, but this was just stupid.
--The exposition scenes bring the plot to a screeching halt, mostly because every fight scene is way too long, which makes the slow exposition scenes stick out like sore thumbs.
--Did we really need a penetration shot in the chocolate cake scene? This and the Zion orgy/Neo-Trinity coupling give this film an R for completely the wrong reasons.
--Speaking of Neo/Trinity as a couple, Carrie-Anne Moss looks like a man in this movie. I remember her as being beautiful in a unique and different way in the first movie; what happened here?
--Way, way too many Superman in-jokes. Yeah, we get it, Neo is Superman. Which means there's ZERO suspense in anything he does; we know he'll eventually come out on top. I halfway expected Neo to fly around the earth and rotate it backwards to bring Trinity back to life.
On balance, I liked it, but it absolutely does not live up to the hype. 6/10