Elliot Gould & Chinese Food

Rating: 8/10 (10 November 2003)

Did anyone ever see the Twillight Zone episode where Elliot Gould was a restaurant reviewer that wrote his reviews before going to the restaurant? That's what it seems like a lot of the critics have done with Matrix:Revolutions. It was as if the all knew what they were going to say in advance. Well, I'm no Oracle, but I have to tell you, the critics are damn wrong on this one. Revolutions is a complex, clever, and thought provoking film. It's certainly not nuclear science or anything, but I haven't read a single review that has even tried to make sense of the riddles posed and explored by the film. It really is like a wonderful puzzle and ends up echoing similar themes that have been posed by recent Japanese films like Princess Monoke and Final Fantasy Spirits Within about violence and war (as opposed to the Hollywood WWII formula of Us Vs. Them). But perhaps the movie critics, having been in an intellectual stupor due to over exposure of most Hollywood fare (Matrix:Revolutions deconstructs Schwarzenegger and perhaps reveals why no one's interested in seeing Ahnold's movies anymore), just can't approach the ideas in it and can only seem to respond to whether or not the action and special effects of the film are good (they seem to look for the visuals as evidence that Matrix:Revolutions has nothing to offer, dismissing the most delectable parts of the film as "pseudo-philosophy gobbligook"). I'm sure if Revolutions were a French film, critics would be singing its praises. And that's too bad because it only means that some moviegoers will avoid this movie because of the negative reviews and instead spend their money on insipid fare like "Elf" or "Master and Commander".