The Matrix Revolutions

A comedy bonanza.

A quick warning: This MAY contain spoilers. I say MAY because the plot is completely nonsensical and I’m not sure I could spoil any of the big ‘twists’ if I wanted to. My plot summary will be exuberant and focus on the comedic elements rather than any of the supposed ‘philisophical’ moments contained in the film.

I saw School of Rock last week. I meant to review it, but I never got around to it as the past week has been focused on sleeping through my classes and singing a cappella versions of Counting Crows songs. Regardless, here is a quick summation of the review I was planning to write: It was good. Jack Black was funny. Joan Cusack was even funnier. The best family movie I’ve seen since Finding Nemo.

Never did I imagine that I’d see a movie so much funnier less than a week later. I went into The Matrix Revolutions wanting desperately to not see it and go find delicious food at an All Day Breakfast restaurant. However, I was suckered in and ended up going to see the film and somehow ending up with a Bag of Popcorn as BIG AS THE MOON that tasted like pure and unbridled hatred. I was not wanting to like this movie.

2 hours and some minutes later, I had a smile on my face and the warm feeling of love in my tummy. I laughed harder than I ever imagined I would during the course of this film. From the very start to the very finish, there was not a minute that did not leave me feeling amused. I have to give credit to the Wachkowski brothers — with the original Matrix they created an entertaining and somewhat intelligent film. They followed that up with The Matrix Reloaded which was the cinematic equivelant to falling asleep on the subway and waking up bewildered and confused and somewhere in North Dakota. And then the trilogy was capped off by The Matrix Revolutions which stands as the greatest comedy of 2003 and perhaps of all time.

But let’s get down to the details.

The film begins with Keanu Reeves at a train station, presumably somewhere in North Dakota. There is also a family there and they converse and Keanu Reeves proves once more that he still has the ability to stare blanky at something. Then a bunch of talking happens with the occasional fight or random slow motion sequence and some hilarious dialogue about the “power of love” or something like that. The hilarity REALLY ramps up when the humans get in giant robot bodies and lumber about their Zion city, waving their robot arms in the air.

A bunch of people give speeches and that French guy shows up again for like two minutes to be all French and EVIL. Agent Smith is also around and Hugo Weaving overacts to the point where I fall in love with him five times over and wish he was MY arch-nemesis. Also Laurence Fishburne is still there and still every bit a worthless nutcase who rambles about “The One” while the other characters spout lame one-liners that fill me with repulsion and glee.

The hilarity ramps up even MORE as we approach the climax and Trinity takes about nine years to die all the while Neo sits beside her staring blankly in a pitiful attempt to look sad. Then, in an apex of comedy rarely seen, we reach the film’s denouement in which Neo is stapled to a neon cross and paraded around Zion while all the cast members from the trilogy — alive and dead –return to the stage, along with the Wachowski brothers, their crew and several burly teamsters, waving signs yelling “NEO IS JESUS! JESUS, KIDS! NEO IS JESUS! LOOK! HE’S ANALOGOUS TO JESUS! ISN’T THAT SMART?”

This continues for several minutes before the credits roll.

To summarize, The Matrix Trilogy is undoubtedly the work of a couple of brothers who took a low-level university philosophy class, got high and wrote a failed comic book. Realizing that making a feature film requires much less creativity and, well, talent, they turned to Hollywood and gave us The Matrix. After the film was a surprising hit, the brothers took even MORE drugs (But, of course, no more philosophy classes — after all, everything deep about the universe can be learned from a cursorary reading of SparkNotes’ page on Plato’s Republic) and wrote two more movies, all the while claiming this was “their plan all along” despite the fact that giving your protagonist the powers of GOD at the end of your first chapter is the storyteller’s equivelant to shooting yourself in the foot.

But hark, there is hope. The Matrix Revolutions is such a poorly-crafted plotless soulless absurdly-acted piece of film-making that it transcends that which it attempts to do and becomes a glorious and self-deprecating parody of itself. See it. You’ll be awash with laughter and good times.

Matt