THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS

 As Miss Jean Brodie once observed, 'for those who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like' and enough people liked the original "The Matrix" to turn it into a trilogy. "The Matrix" movies were technical marvels full of gobbledygook and it hardly mattered that they didn't make much sense but strung together they added up to almost seven hours of screen time and that's an awful lot of gobbledygook and time spent inside what is basically a computer game. After the third "Matrix" film the Wachowskis decided to call it a day, wisely I thought, so why now 'the Resurrections'? Don't filmmakers know when to leave well enough alone?

Anyone coming fresh to "The Matrix Resurrections" won't have a clue what's going on and even if you've been here before you still won't have a clue what's going on. These are movies for gaming nerds and computer geeks who can't tell pretentious bull from real life, (btw, I think I just cracked a Matrix joke!), so now Lana Wachowski has come up with the idea of making a self-reverential sequel to the trilogy that tells us we're watching a Warner Brothers sequel to the trilogy and she's 'resurrected' Keanu Reeves, (you know, the actor with the personality of artificial intelligence minus the intelligence), as Thomas Anderson aka Neo and Carrie-Anne Moss as Trinity while Morpheus is now a lot younger and sexier than Laurence Fishburne ever was.

On a technical and visual level this movie is still a marvel but sadly it takes itself very seriously when it's really a spoof, or should be, of the earlier Matrix movies. Come to think of it, the second and third Matrix movies should have been spoofs of the original rather than sequels while Reeves cements his reputation as the world's worst actor. On the plus side there's Jonathan Groff and Neil Patrick Harris as the bad guys and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is excellent as the new Morpheus.  Reeves spends a good deal of time saying 'this can't be happening'; unfortunately it is, on a screen near you. I have a feeling even nerds are going to be disappointed this time round.