Enough Eye Candy to Choke a Diabetic

Rating: Null/10 (20 July 2003)

While the original Matix film was fresh and original, the sequel is stale and all too predictable. The original film introduced us to the mind-blowing martial arts fighting techniques which were previously unknown here in the USA (unless you watched a lot of imported Hong Kong flicks) and also used special effects which had never been seen or even attempted. Now, however, the "Matrix-style" fight scenes are used in almost every TV show and film, and the special effects just aren't so special anymore. In the original, a five-minute fight scene had the audience riveted. In the sequel, a similar 20-minute fight scene had me yawning before it was halfway over. I also found myself yawning whenever one of the charcters stopped fighting long enough to give one of the many long, drawn-out, psuedo-philosophical speeches which littered the film. These were all delivered in the soft, slow voice that grandpas use when reading to little kids before bed, and they had roughly the same effect on the audience. In a nutshell, this is a film about people in sunglasses acting cool. The people who think the "message" in this movie is deep are folks who have probably never even been in the same room as an actual philosophy book. The special effects will have most 13-year-olds praising this as the greatest accomplishment in the history of cinema. The rest of us will just consider it to be two hours of halfway decent entertainment and nothing more.