Gargantuan in Failure
I would have been upset, but that I had really low expectations that were solidly met.

I was a mixed fan of the first film, believing it to have a basic flaw in the philosophy of the premise (never asking the question of "what is 'real'?"), though I enjoyed it and consider it on of the defining films of the decade. I had, however, hopes the secod film mght mak me a fan.

This review at the New Yorker is a dazzling review or the atrocity:

On the hodge-podge of the philosophy:
"It would have been nice if some of that complexity, or any complexity, had made its way into the sequel. But—to get to the bad news—“Matrix Reloaded” is, unlike the first film, a conventional comic-book movie, in places a campy conventional comic-book movie, and in places a ludicrously campy conventional comic-book movie."

The sillyness of that underground city:
"Like every good-guy citadel in every science-fiction movie ever made, Zion is peopled by stern-jawed uniformed men who say things like “And what if you’re wrong, God damn it, what then?” and “Are you doubting my command, Captain?”"

Summig up the betrayal of The Matrix in The Matrix Reoaded:
"For anyone who was transfixed by the first movie, watching the new one is a little like being unplugged from the Matrix: What was I experiencing all that time? Could it have been . . . all a dream?"

The freeway scene:
So "unbound by any rules except the rule of Now He’ll Jump Off That Fast-Moving Thing Onto the Next Fast-Moving Thing that they are tedious to watch."

I would only add three comments to his review. 1) The philosophy reminds me of community college students with a penchant for philosophy: They've read too much to be nicely dumb and normal and too little to be interestingly intelligent. 2) The word to describe this film is gargantuan, and (being the oppsite of "epic") that is not a compliment. 3) This films shows a complete lack of understand of almost all aspects of culture.