Overrated

Rating: 4/10 (16 May 2003)

Warning: Contains some spoilers
Oh please, come on people. This has to be one of the most overrated movies I have EVER seen. I thought the action scenes were extremely boring due to the fact that everyone was pretty much invincible. Who would have thought they could have ruined a scene with 1000 agents vs Neo. Of course, it never looked like it was a real challenge, and was an incredibly boring scene to watch, except for the flaunting of the CG.
The car chase was equally unexciting. Cars crash into each other and do about 10 flips in the air. I'm sorry, but if you call that realism, I suggest you try and do the same thing on the highway and see what happens. The effects didn't blow me away as much as the first one, except maybe for the explosion on the truck and Neo coming in to save the day (with bullet time, of course). Come on people, "The best car chase scene ever"? Rent Ronin, now THAT's a chase scene.
Another problem is the over usage of Bullet Time. It's a great gimmick, but they use it so much that not only is it no longer impressive, but it makes the fight scenes even more boring.
Returning to the fact that Neo is invincible, what's up with his new Superman flying powers? It simply makes everything uninteresting. Not once did he seem in peril at all, or did anything he was doing seem dangerous. Kind of felt like watching a giant beat up a midget for 2 1/2 hours. I thought he would have a worthy adversary at least, and maybe that would come in the form of those twins. Unfortunately, they were killed off 5 minutes after they arrived. Boooooring.
The story was nothing other than weak. It followed the exact same pattern as the first one, and got tiresome. Monologue, fight, monologue, fight. The speeches on following your destiny and other such junk were useless and have already been said in the first movie. There were also other useless scenes, including the massive dance/orgy that lasted about 15 minutes. Not only did it not add to any of the intrigue or excitement, but it didn't move the story along at all and was just unnecessary.
Not to mention Trinity's "wonderful" resuscitation by Neo. Wow, wasn't it impressive when Neo stuck his hand into her chest and massaged her heart. Yeah, right. [/sarcasm] I couldn't stop laughing at all the dumb things in this movie.
People talk about the first one like it's one of the best movies ever made. While it WAS a very impressive movie technically, and the script was innovative, it didn't require a sequel in my opinion, and certainly not two. You just knew they were going to try to hard to outdo themselves, and the result we get is a botched, flawed film. It was an above average movie, but if anyone would bother to rent some older films, you really can't consider it to be one of the best movies ever made.
Considering this movie had a budget of $150 million, I was expecting a lot more and came out very disappointed. I've seen movies with $20,000 budgets that were much more suspenseful, thought-provoking and interesting that this one.
I'll be very hard pressed to dish out another $9.50 to see the next one when it comes out in November. Count me out. I'll give this movie a 4/10, and the first a 7.5/10.