Two and a half hours I will never get back

Rating: 1/10 (12 June 2016)

This film is just so boring. I tried to like it. I really did. There were so many times during the movie when I thought that I could just shut it off and do something else but I thought there had to be something of value from this. Spoiler Alert: There wasn't. I'll start at the beginning. The first twenty minutes of the film is just monkeys doing stuff. That's really all there is. That is until this giant rectangle shows up (I have no idea what it is, the movie never explains it) The monkeys act differently but it's never really elaborated on. Thousands of years later, the same rectangle is found again on the moon. Then they send these guys on a spaceship on some mission (I can't really remember what it was for) However, that's not until two 7- minute scenes of a ship floating through space with the Blue Danibue in the background. Not zooming. Not speeding. Floating. It goes on forever. The whole movie is like this. It moves painfully slow and there's barely any character development. Now let's talk about the villain, HAL 9000. Many regard him as one of the best if not the best sci-fi villain ever. How? HAL is completely useless. He adds nothing to the story, other than wasting more time (yay) He's not even really evil. His dastardly plot is to defend himself and save the mission. How is that evil. You could argue that he kills one of the main characters, but again, it's defense. Late in the movie, the two main guys plot to terminate HAL because they suspect that he might be malfunctioning. Well what would you do if you were in the middle of space with two other people and both of them were plotting to kill you? try to stop them? Well that obviously means that you're evil. Anyway, HAL is killed in the most drawn out way possible, keeping with the tone of the movie. See, HAL is a computer and the only way to shut him down is to remove a bunch of computer chips. So the remaining crew member removes them and it takes forever! I'm serious it takes an eternity. And HAL's ingenious plan to stop him from doing this is to keep repeating "Please stop." over and over and over and over and over and ..... Okay you get it. So after taking an hour to kill HAL, Dave (I just remembered his name) pilots the ship into..... I have absolutely no idea. All I know is that there are a bunch of flashing lights and Dave makes some funny faces which I guess are supposed to be disturbing. For all I know, this could just be Spaceballs 1 going at Ludicrous Speed. Now, we see this old guy in a bed and the camera cuts from Dave to the old guy over and over again. Dave Old Guy Dave Old Guy Dave Old Guy Dave Giant Baby Floating Over the Bed. What the hell?! SO the baby travels through space to Earth and just stares at it for a few seconds and...... the movie ends. So, I have no idea what happened. The rectangle? Never explained. Old Guy? Never explained. Giant Space Fetus? Never explained and I had the most questions about that too. I didn't bother to mention all of the moments which just drag out for an eternity, but trust me, there's plenty. While the theme song is iconic and epic and the special effects are amazing, it's not worth sitting for two and a half hours to watch almost nothing happen for the majority of the time to come to a resolution where you have no idea what happened. I've heard that the book explains more than the movie does and I plan to read it in the future, but would it have been so hard to get a narrator for this to tell us what was going on. I'm not saying hand me the plot on a silver platter, I'm just saying give me some idea as to what's happening. Seriously, how awesome would it be to have Orson Welles narrate this movie. Now that would be worth it. Now if you're trying to find treatment for insomnia, then this movie is for you. Otherwise, stay away.