Let me put it this way: something I said about the first movie as a joke turned out to be true.

Rating: 4/10 (21 May 2003)

The Matrix Reloaded suffers from a majority of problems (poor pacing, most action scenes are dull, the characters are boring, the dialogue and story try to make the movie seem deeper than it actually is). I think the movie's biggest problem is that it doesn't compel you to watch the upcoming sequel, it FORCES you to.
Now, we've all seen movie trilogies, right? Of course we have. The first one that comes to mind is Star Wars, and we're currently watching two other movie trilogies unfold, namely the Star Wars prequel series and the adapted Lord of the Rings (I'll make note that the Terminator series does not count as it wasn't intended as a trilogy from the beginning, or even from the second installment). Both the Star Wars trilogies and Lord of the Rings all serve as three parts of one long story (or six, in the case of Star Wars, though I prefer to consider them two separate but related trilogies as opposed to one long six-part series), but they are all still capable of standing on their own, to a point. While it's normal for a "middle" movie to feel like it needs an introduction and to feel that it's unresolved, there is usually a sub-plot that exists to keep the audience entertained (Vader's search for Skywalker and the Millenium Falcon, the defense of Helm's Deep), and a "middle" movie usually leaves the audience satisfied, but curious as to what happens next.
Unfortunately, the Wachowskis made the mistake of making one long movie and literally cutting it in half and selling the halves as separate movies. This means that neither part can be enjoyed without watching the other. Here, watching the other movies in the series isn't just a nice convenience, it's required. The Wachowskis are teasing us, saying "you want to know what the hell happened here? WATCH OUR OTHER MOVIE! MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY!!" What's this all about? We get half a movie and you expect us to be satisfied long enough for you to market the second half? I would have accepted the cliffhanger ending better had anything, even the minor sub-plots, been resolved before that.
---Spoilers from here on---
This movie seriously needed a villain. The first movie had the Agents, who formed a collective villainous presence. Here, the standard Agents are little more than irritating, and the big bad rogue Agent Smith doesn't appear enough to establish any real menace. The Merovingian only shows up halfway through the movie, and then, he's really more of an obstacle than a villain. So who are they afraid of?
Then there's the horsecrap the Architect feeds us at the end. What's this? Matrix 6.0? You've destroyed Zion five times before? Wait a minute, what? Neo holds off Sentinels in the real world?
Wait, wait, hold on... are you telling me that the real world isn't real either? Matrix within a Matrix?! What the hell is that?! I was making JOKES about that when the first movie came out, now it turns out that it's true?! It seems like they were trying to give us a shocker at the end (ala "Luke, I am your father!"), and they best they could come up with was something I was using to get laughs, and cheap laughs at that? Shame on you, Wachowskis. Shame on you.
X2 was a disappointment, Matrix Reloaded was a disappointment... Terminator 3, you won't betray me, will you? ...will you?