Review Copyright Rose Cooper, 2003

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My youngest son was once enamored of the godawful movie called A Night At The Roxbury. At first, he owned the videotape, and he would play it over and over and over again, in its entirety. Only because I love my son so much, I bought him the DVD. And a funny thing happened: I noticed that he'd skip to the [ahem] "good parts", which cut down my torture in having to watch that movie, considerably. Oddly enough, I can picture myself doing the same thing when The Matrix Reloaded is released on DVD. THE STORY (WARNING: **spoilers contained below**) Continuing the story started in The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded revisits the story of Man vs Machine, with Machine having the upper hand, but Man being slowly awakened to the real world around them. In this go-round, though Neo (Keanu Reeves) is seen as The One by believers like Captain Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), Neo's fellow soldier and girlfriend Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), and ship Operator Link (Harold Perrineau), not everyone has a very high opinion of Neo. Certainly not ex-Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), who Neo only thought he destroyed earlier. And Morpheus isn't totally beloved, either; Captain Naobi (Jada Pinkett-Smith) begrudgingly respects Morpheus, but is now linked up with his commanding officer. Link's wife Zee (Nona Gaye), who suffered the loss of her brothers Tank and Dozer, doesn't trust him much, either. And even The Oracle (Gloria Foster) may not be as she appears. THE UPSHOT If it's not clear, I was deeply disappointed by The Matrix Reloaded. I thought it could've been much, much better overall. Sure, the Action Bits were great (especially that freeway battle scene); but as is the bane of many movies these days, if you've seen it in the trailers, you've seen most of the Good Parts. The problem I had was with all the stuff going on between the fights. I'm really not into the Star Wars-type fantasy hoohah, and that seemed to be the call of the day here, albeit on a much smaller scale. Whenever the characters would go into long stretches of exposition about Why We Are Here, I'd start wishing I had a remote control to skip to the Good Parts again. In terms of the personnel involved, they did a decent job (even those like Jada Pinkett-Smith, who is okay in small doses...like she was in Reloaded). Carrie-Anne Moss once again opened the flick with a blast as Trinity, who thankfully provided more than a Warm Place for Neo to Put It. As a character, Link doesn't hold a candle to Tank, though since Nona Gaye comes along with Harold Perrineau, I can diggit. But I was bothered by Laurence Fishburne, who hit the wrong notes for me as Morpheus this time around. I kept noticing him Acting, which is never a good thing; what was once Cool in him, now seemed contrived and even a bit naive. And though Neo's Superman Thing was cute 'n all, Keanu Reeves just doesn't quite come across as a messiah. Even without the "whoa". And let me get back to the action for a minute, because I had Issues there too, mostly with the lack of sense some of it made. As with the slower explanatory scenes, the fight scenes suffered from 1) too much silly ex-Agent Smith, Freed Slave, 2) too much Weird French Dude (and did all that get convoluted, or what?) and 3) the sudden disappearance of the White Twins. In the end, I found The Matrix Reloaded to be too sketchy, lacking focus. Between the muddle of characters and concepts being acted upon, I had no idea what The Matrix Reloaded was trying to Say. In short, like Neo, I found myself wondering why I was there. THE "BLACK FACTOR"    [ObDisclaimer: We Are Not A Monolith] I started to not even bring this up, but it's on my mind, so...am I The Only One to notice that the future - at least as The Matrix sees it - is considerably Black? Not that I mind or anything; considering how few sci-fi flicks see Us as part of the future, I'm thinking this is most def A Good Thing. I'm just sayin'. "What we have here is a...failure to communicate..." BAMMER'S BOTTOM LINE I wish I could greenlight The Matrix Reloaded; but I can't. As a standalone film, Reloaded believed too much in its own hype; and as a sequel, it pales next to its predecessor. The action kicked butt, to be sure, but far too often, The Matrix Reloaded came up shooting blanks. Oh, and before I go, let me give a shout-out to that literary critic whose criticism of me stemmed from a quote from the uncorrected proof of the 3BC book, with regards to The Oracle: NYAH! THE MATRIX RELOADED:   back to top And that's the way I see it. Rose "Bams" Cooper 3BlackChicks Review™ Copyright Rose Cooper, 2003 EMAIL: bams@3blackchicks.com    ICQ: 7760005 http://www.3blackchicks.com/