I didn't find it to be silly at all, because of being "the one" he can manipulate the Matrix code basically rendering anything he wants to do possible.
I did find silly when his powers extended beyond the Matrix.
The problem with this is that they tried to extend the canonical story of the trilogy into the video games and anime series - of course, almost no one played all the games (certainly not Matrix Online enough to reveal the story), and as a result the movies suffered a ton. I don't know the full details because I pretty much just ignore everything in the series that isn't the first movie and The Animatrix, but I do know bits and pieces.
But basically, Neo was one of the results of the machine's experimentation into creating humans that could interface directly into machine systems, with the eventual goal of making The Matrix unnecessary. However, since Neo was a part of the matrix like everyone else, the systemic anomaly that creates The One ended up making him The One purely out of chance (note that there are other people out there like him, he's not the only person who was created/modified in that way).
Thus, his influence over The Matrix was carried over into the real world due to the modification the machines had made to him.
Yeah, I'm not much of a fan of that scene, either. Actually, 90% of the second and third movie are pretty bad.
I was referring to the end of the first movie.
To be fair, it wasn't really 'love' that brought him back.