Mike's amazing mid-May movie review:

Okay, so I went to see the Matrix Reloaded on Sunday. And no, I'll refrain from making the lame "They mean Matrix Overloaded" joke that every critic on the PLANET seems to have made. Let me start with a confession: unlike most people, I was not that struck with the first film. Its smorgasbord offering of pseudo-intelligent, profundity and theology was like listening to that guy in high school who'd read one philosophy book (either Kierkegaard or Nietzsche) and sat in the lunchroom dispensing wisdom like Pez - tiny tablets without any real substance. But with guns, lots of guns.

Visually, the second film, like the first, was quite impressive; in fact, it was a little over-impressive. The opening sequence was so utterly CG'd, and so utterly logic defying, that I really didn't know what to expect from the much-hyped fights. Thankfully, with the painful exception of the Neo vs. 100 Smiths, most of the fights were cool. The 100 Smiths battle, which I have heard many people praise as the future of film fighting, was like watching a video game that some else was playing. It's like I didn't even have to be there. With all the other fights relying on intricate wirework and the actors doing their own marital arts, why do I want to see a computer generated Keanu Reeves beat up a bunch of computer generated Hugo Weavings? Why do I care?

But perhaps the most confusing scenes in a picture wrought with Keymasters, Ghost Twins, omnipotent beings were the church meeting/orgy in Zion and Neo's meeting with the Architect.

The overlong church meeting, with "prayers" to no one in particular and a lot of hot, sweaty semi-naked people gyrating around, seemed grossly out of place. When they started dancing, I thought to myself, "Oh, they're Pentecostal." Then I thought, "Are all Pentecostals this SEXY?"

Where were the old and sick looking people who offered Neo and Trinity gifts? Are only the young and pretty allowed to go to church in Zion? Do they worship St. Nelly and sing his familiar hymn, "It's getting hot in here, Lord. So take off all your clothes, Lord." This was just some teenage masturbatory fantasy, not something that added to the plot of the film I was watching. Pointless and stupid!

Also pointless and stupid was Neo's conversation with the Architect. This is where the film should have ended. But, no, the Wachowski Brothers needed to drag this story out into another film. So instead of answers, we get more questions. Personally, I was hoping to find George Lucas at the heart of the Matrix.

Worse than needlessly dragging this film out, was the ridiculousness of the Architect's language. It was like a first-year University student who has discovered the "Thesaurus" function in his word-processing program. Was his speech supposed to be the most convoluted piece of nonsense? Or was this a clever ploy to get all the geeks back to watch this film one more time in a futile attempt to understand this gibber-ish? This was the point in the film where I largely tuned out: multiple Matrixes (what's the plural?), multiple Neos, multiple crap. I can't wait to find out in the next film that Zion and its inhabitants are all part of a much larger Matrix. Boy, won't that be fun!