Well, it was one hell of a torture watching this.

Rating: 4/10 (27 March 2016)

A torture to the eyes and ears, this "philosophical" sci-fi movie presents you with ideas not well understood by the majority of the population, and it provides you with little explanation because it is one of those movies that wants you to draw your own conclusions, and that is where it goes wrong. And when you have too many people in the world who are ready to make something out of nothing, when in every generation you have this large number of philosophers that ponder pretty much everything "artistic" they see, you have the secret of the success of this movie. And there's another problem, "art". This movie tried being "artistic" in various ways throughout the movie, the first 15 painful minutes of monkeys fooling around, that ~10 minute scene where the guy is floating through space seeing all these colors and experiencing what someone on LSD experiences... it was painful. If a painter shows you his painting and tells you the meaning, you either go "hmm, that's good" or "hmm, that's bad". But when he shows you a painting which he drew while he was on acid, and tells you that there's a meaning behind it and you have to figure it out, you go "hmmmmmmmmmm....." and you can't draw a proper conclusion, and 2001 is just that, a well drawn painting on acid that has a meaning you have to figure out, and that is why it is so successful, you can shape the movie the way you want it to be. It's mysterious, it always has room for a discussion, and if you're into figuring out the hidden meanings of every god-damned thing, you'll love this as well.
The effects for the time were amazing, along with the futuristic ideas. Everything from the space station to the video chats and the synthetic food are things we see today, and were things they dreamed in 1968, it takes one hell of a vision to make something like this. The characters were pretty dull. The movie had poor character development, to the point where HAL was much more human than the actual humans. And don't expect much dialogue as well.
In conclusion: If you want to see a movie which knows how to deliver ideas properly, which is straightforward with it, and which sacrifices anything artistic for clarity, do not watch it. If, however, you like to ponder a lot, if you like to make meanings out of something, then by all means, watch it.
In the end I'd like to say that I regret wasting my time watching this, because it was certainly not worth it. Peace.