my favourite... *both* see it *and* read the book!

Rating: Null/10 (28 December 1998)

Reading the comments, and talking to people, this seems to be one of those movies where you either like it or you don't. I've never heard anyone say "Oh, it's okay..." - they either go on about how good it was or how bad it was. It's probably my favourite movie, so I guess that makes me one of the former.
I first saw this movie with no real expectations; someone told me I had to see it. I remember thinking the ape-men scene was drawn out, but it wasn't drawn out the second time I watched it. It was probably the person I was with, which often influences how I feel about certain aspects of movies.
To someone who has always dreamed about spaceflight, and loved the "Blue Danube" ( :) ), both from an early age, this movie was very little else but beautiful. As a matter of fact, it was a childhood piano teacher who first recommended the book series to me -- I only remembered this after I'd seen it twice.
I read the book eventually, and loved it. Normally, I like the book over the movie. Occasionally, I like the movie over the book. This was neither. To only see the movie, or only read the book, is to get only part of an amazing story. They have slightly different plotlines, both of which seem right; even though they contradict each other in the logical sense, they really augment each other and build into something more than either one alone.
I recently found the book, "The Lost Worlds of 2001" by Arthur C. Clarke. It is out of print, and I had been searching for it in used bookstores for awhile. It describes some of the process of making the movie and writing the book/screenplay. It also has previous versions of parts of the story.
Here is another place where I break one of my usual "rules". Normally, given two versions of a poem or other piece of writing, I will prefer the first one whether I know it is first or not. In this case, I prefer the finished product. But the different universes that open up in the alternate stories are interesting, too...they just seem (and probably are) unfinished and the eventual end result is more satisfying somehow.
As far as the Stargate sequence toward the end, it was just a blob of confusing bright colours to me until the last two times I saw it. Given eyeglasses that block out a lot of light, I noticed that there are actually landscapes and things in there besides just abstract forms!
The Starchild is yet another thing in this film that I find it difficult to use anything other than superlatives about. It embodies one of my pet theories about things - that in order to see things the way they are, a person has to get rid of everything attached to their perceptions and revert to the perceptions of an infant; also, that going "forward" often looks like going "backward"...
I personally have no problem with the length of this film; it's not something I really took into consideration. It may have something to do with being able to stare out a car window at nothing for a longer period of time -- 2001 is way more interesting than that, and holds my attention more easily.
If you see this movie, read the book. If you've read the book, see the movie. Otherwise you're not getting the whole picture.