I'm sure most of you blog-readin' geeks have already seen The Matrix: Reloaded, but if not, fair warning: I saw it yesterday, and I'm going to jabber about it, so if you might want to skip this if you want your movie viewings pristine and uncluttered by my clucks and titters about it.

Okay. When it comes to movies, I'm basically either really hard to please or extraordinarily easy to please, depending. For example, if we're talking a Serious Drama or an Art Film or a Smart Comedy, I'm extremely hard to please; I tend to pick at these sorts of movies pretty minutely, because the filmmakers ostensibly are putting forth considerable effort, and I figure that merits serious attention, and that attention can sometimes reveal some pretty glaring holes or chancres or fuck-alls; art is hard.

On the other hand, when I'm going for a good summer popcornholing, I am extremely easy to please: I am in this way very much a guy. Make stuff go boom and look cool! Fine. Movies that have no real (or, let's say, very easily dismissed) pretensions I can let wash over me pretty easily; I'm pretty forgiving, even when, as in TM:R, those pretensions are pretty bongwater-sticky. So while I didn't appreciate the dorm-room smell, it eventually washed off.

Because honestly: did they learn nothing from the first one? Did they ask any of the millions of people who bought the DVD how they were used? "We just skip around to the fight scenes." No, they had to get all soggy-dick fake philosophical again on our poor asses, with bafflingly dotty exchanges between Neo and Morpheus and the Architect and whomever. And watching poor Keanu attempting cagey ripostes is a lot like watching a fashion designer trying to be relevant. It's always going to be a rotten failure.

Architect: No, Neo, you are here to see to the fall of Zion. It has always been thus.

Neo: I exist to save Zion. I know your code, I've seen the heart of the Matrix.

Architect: Neo, you have seen Trinity in your dreams. You know I am right. I resemble Donald Sutherland.

Neo: You are a bake sale. I'm the hungry ants.

Architect: Child. You are enameled bakeware in the back of the store. I am a lonely porch swing. You know this.

Neo: (Thinking hard.) I thought that other guy was John Voight for a second.

Architect: We all did.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm pretty sure they just took a bunch of the dialogue outtakes from the first one and rammed them into this one, because it all makes about as much sense: not much. But who cares? One thing about the Matrix movies is, you always know when it's safe to go to the bathroom. "What did I miss?" "Nothing. They're still talking."

The less said about the terrifying hippie orgie, the better. If they wanted to show footage of Keanu and Carrie-Anne squonking it, I can't think of anyone who would object: why ruin it by intercutting it with what appears to be Burning Man as imagined by Maxfield Parrish?

But fuck all that; what I was there for of course were the effects and fights and ignoring that little voice in my head that asks, "Why do they sometimes use guns and other times not use guns? And why do the agents dodge bullets so effortlessly, but they can't dodge a punch?" Shut up, voice! Lookit the hundreds of Agent Smiths (and they let Hugo get kinda cheeky, didn't they?)! Lookit the cooool tracking shots on the freeway that go under axles and stuff! I mean come on! This is good CGI! (I'm so easy, I know. Well, that, and I don't get people who complain about stuff that looks "too CGI-ey" when it comes to movies like this. Do people go to Italian restaurants and complain about all the pasta everywhere?)

So I liked it. But I was primed to like it, and as I said, I'm easy on these types of movies. And everyone knows it's just a waiting game until the real show hits town. You know the one. The one in December.

Yes, I'm talking about Dumb and Dumberest.