Video/DVD Review: The Matrix

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What Parents Should Know
Parents need to know that although this movie is rated R for violence (some pretty gross, including an icky bug that enters the hero's body through his belly button) and language, most teens 14 and up who are begging to see it should be able to handle it without a problem.

Families can talk about the relationship between humans and machines, and why Smith says that the first Matrix program, creating the perception of a utopia-like society, was unacceptable to the humans. Their attempt to keep the humans compliant through happiness did not work, so they had to try again with the past "reality" of a stress-filled world. There are also issues of destiny versus free will and loyalty versus self-interest. Parents should think about raising the issue of violence in movies, and the impact it has on viewers, especially impressionable or disaffected ones, as well.

In THE MATRIX, Keanu Reeves stars as a computer programmer with a sideline as a hacker who gets mysterious messages that lead him to Morpheus ( Laurence Fishburne), leader of a rag-tag group that lives aboard a rocket-style craft. It turns out that it is not 1999 but somewhere around a hundred years into the future. All of humanity has been turned into a source of energy to keep machines "alive." The Matrix is a massive computer program that has the humans believing that they are still living in a world that has been destroyed. Special agents, led by Smith ( Hugo Weaving) seek out Morpheus and his followers, to destroy them.

In A Star is Born, Kris Kristofferson sings a song that begins, "Are you a figment of my imagination or am I a figment of yours?" This is the theme of THE MATRIX, heavy on special effects and brooding paranoia, light on plot, dialogue, character and even coherence. In other words, it is the ideal movie for the kind of teenager who wishes that video games could come to life. Though rated R for violence (some pretty gross, including an icky bug that enters the hero's body through his belly button) and language, most teens 13 and up who are begging to see it should be able to handle it without a problem.