h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's an okay film. The acting isn't great. The special effects are very good. The allegory is so obvious it wasn't worth it (calling the city 'Zion' is about as subtle as it got).

There's also the very obvious point - what's wrong with blissful ignorance? The set up on Earth seems okay from what I remember. Humans are enslaved and some are miffed that this is the case. I bet rabbits are mortally pissed off that humans rule the world but because they don't have opposable thumbs the poor things have taken to dying of mixamatosis as a sort of protest. If we're going to talk philosophy, then two things:

1. I bet the writers weren't thinking of the film as an allegory for the question 'is it better to be free even when freedom is painful and perilous?' as suggested by that really annoying critic in The Glasgow Herald. Think about it logically (oh go on, it doesn't hurt much) - if the Wachowski brothers put the Christ allegory so bluntly, do you really think they're going to manage to put a subtle existential question that has remained unanswered for centuries into a film with Keanu Reeves in it (nothing against him, sounds like a nice guy, and he will always have been in the Bill and Ted films no matter what)?

2. If Neo is invincible in the new films, then how the heck can the good guys lose?

Everyone who loves the film loves it for two reasons: either they like Keanu Reeves or the fact that the bullet-time thingy looks cool and has been copied a lot afterwards.

I'd rather go and see 'The Actors'. It looks crap but has Dylan Moran in it. Which is just as bad a reason for liking it as people have for liking the Matrix. Except that I'll probably leave 'The Actors' happy and leave 'Matrix Reloaded' melancholy. Big, big difference.