"KEEP TELLING YOURSELF… IT'S ONLY A MOVIE!!!" - review by Stew.
What have I been watching lately? Okie dokie, Skip, I have been watching: 'The Matrix Reloaded'. How'd'ya like them apples?
'The Matrix Reloaded', despite simultaneously raising pure white rage and murdering the hopes and dreams of some of the world's most fat and smelly critics, didn't drive a stake thru this here tubby stinker's heart - pull yourselves together, you fuckin' goons, its just a film! The bits between the action sag like Brigitte Bardot's tits, but the ass-kickery is just fine - and that's really the best anyone can expect. They wrote themselves into such a corner with the first one, there was no way this second instalment could have been any more than incomprehensible pseudo-explanatory piffle with a few CGI rucks in between - and that's what you got, so can the mewling would you, you tools.
The concept of the outcome of 'The Matrix' storyline having any bearing on the happiness and well-being of anyone living on our plain of reality is ridiculous; at best its no more than a power-wank fantasy for overcoat-in-summer sporting, nu-metal-loving pillocks who read books written from the Vampire's point of view and wear them big stacked biker boots with metal plates on the front to go shopping to Asda. Its like the Wachowskis ought to issue a new set of posters apologising to nerds the world over, with the tagline 'The Matrix Reloaded - Not A Cure For Cancer' added for good measure. Jesus…
The first one took me three viewings to get into, if I'm honest about it; not because it, like, totally blew my mind, man, but because every single swanky effects shot in 'The Matrix' was shown in its frigging entirety in the trailer - there's me scoping the teaser, thinking, 'whoa, this is just the tip of the iceberg', then I sets meself down to watch the film proper and end up enduring a good two hours worth of jumped-up Camden Cyber-Goths waffling, (about something that, lets be honest, could all be revealed to be a fucking Bobby Ewing-esque dream in number three), in anticipation of groundbreaking action and unprecedented physical/digital effects. Which, to be fair, were groundbreaking and unprecedented in theory, but not when I'd seen them all on every single TV show, trailer reel and ad break in Christendom for a solid month in advance. So, inevitably disappointed on first viewing, I saw it again a few times at my leisure, and sort of came to dig the story - a pile of old horseshit, yes, but entertaining horseshit nevertheless.
Not expecting great shakes from '…Reloaded', I was happy when it delivered enough entertaining moments to semi-justify its existence - the car chase was indeed a corker, the 'Burly Brawl' was amusing enough, Hugo Weaving was on top form throughout and you just know that that big Powerloader-from-'Aliens' walking war suit is going to get major screentime come part three - mainly because it just turned up and looked pretty for three seconds this time around. I am willing to admit that it had more bad points than good, however - the script was woeful, and basically nonsensed a whole chunk, if not all, of the first movie; what you could only term the ad-break for the video game slotted into the assault on the power station appeared to have been edited with a plastic knife by a blind fingerless leper; the CGI throughout was actually shoddier-looking than in the first one; the structuring of the fight sequences was odd, (Canoe busts up over a hundred Agent Smiths at once, but six silk-shirted wire-work fucks with swords can lay The Heavy Shit on him not half an hour later at that chateau? Eh? What? Clearly he's going to win - he can take out a hundred bad guys at once, we've already seen him do it, and, perhaps more importantly, he can stop bullets with the power of thought…); perhaps most contentiously, not a word of it made a blind bit of sense, (and trust me, when you finally figure out what The Architect was saying there's still plot holes you could throw a dog through, whichever 'door' Canoe chose to take).
I can't help thinking that the geek community has somehow over-inflated the importance of 'The Matrix Reloaded'; I appreciate that it didn't fully deliver in terms of plot, but for the love of Christ, what do you expect - it's a daft sci-fi movie. The first one didn't have to explain anything, hence appearing innovative, deep and enigmatic - this one has had to give it The Old College Try at expanding on the techno-mystical claptrap of the first one by necessity, so has, therefore, more fully revealed its true identity as no more than… wait for it… A DAFT SCI-FI MOVIE. You know why '…Reloaded' seems a bit of letdown? Because, (may God strike me down), the whole premise of The Matrix series is inherently a bit silly. Yes folks - it's not a true story. It's a fantasy story. Leave it open-ended, its cool, it can be interpreted any damn way the viewer likes, becoming as big or as small, as deep or as shallow as the individual requires, allowing the original movie to take on a life of its own in the heads of the audience; begin to try and explain it, it sounds like the fuckin' tissue-thin flim-flam it really is, and it becomes even sillier. Like, "oh, that's what it all really means. Oh. That's not what I thought would happen. That's just a bit shit really, innit."
But you know, all things considered, I'll watch 'The Hairdresser's Husband' for a deeply moving emotional experience that both enlightens and enriches me as a person - 'The Matrix Reloaded' had a bunch of sweet fight scenes in it, and that'll do for me.
That said, if 'LOTR:
Return Of The King' doesn't deliver, I'll slit my wrists in a warm bath.