Better with extensive viewing

Rating: 10/10 (23 May 2003)

If you can cut through the hype, this movie is quite watchable. I found myself staring in disbelief at the screen for long periods of time. Talk about pseudo-intellectualism for the sake of pseudo-intellectualism. The philosophical tripe in this movie almost kills any momentum built through tradition and not-so-traditional avenues of film-making in a first viewing. While the further exploration of The Matrix is interesting to some degree, the grandiose strokes of artistic creativity are best appreciated after many viewings.
The fight scenes are cool enough, but I often felt like I was watching a 12-year old kid playing a video game. The scene with 100 Smiths fighting Neo is very cool, but it looks like a video game. The first movie looked more "real" than this (as do the animated shorts), and this film doesn't measure up in that sense. It's almost as if they missed by aiming too high. Commendable, but the end result is silly. I don't want to pay $10 to see a video game. The freeway scene towards the end of the film is also ridiculous, even if entertaining to watch. Again, the action scenes are not what make this movie great.
Perhaps the most interesting scene is in Zion, when the crowd orgasmically dances after Morpheus' speech. But you find yourself distracted more by the nodes on Neo's and Trinity's bodies than by what's actually going on in their bed. Alas, this movie is not about sex (right ...); it's about The Matrix. And that's where the movie really clicks for the starving viewer.
The best Matrix scene? When Neo meets the architect and more "realities" of The Matrix itself become clear. Unfortunately, the scene is too short, too close to the end of the movie and too underdeveloped in the plot before the film ends, telling you it will be concluded in six months. I haven't been this disappointed since ... well, I don't remember. But after watching it again and again, it begins to satisfy -- even without a viewing of the third film.
Target audience: teenage boys. Anyone else with half a brain should be slightly disappointed it took four years to make this garbage at first glance. But give it time, watch it again and see the beauty emerge.