irritating noise & psychedelic lights... no movie

Rating: 1/10 (9 June 2010)

You should listen to the reviewers who hated this movie. They are telling you the truth. 90% of this movie is nothing but irritating noises and flashing colors of lights. Perfect if you are planning on doing LSD while watching the movie. Nothing but an irritant to the rest of us. This is by far, the most boring, waste of time movie ever made.
The ape-men sequences at the beginning are utterly ridiculous and seemingly endless stupidity as you sit there and listen to the screaming costumed ape-men jumping around, screaming, fighting and beating up on a pile of bones as they "discover" the bones can be used as tools to beat another tribe of ape-men to death. (These are actually more ape than anything else.) It seemed like this portion of the film would never end. I'm amazed that half the theater didn't walk out by the time they finally ended this absurd beginning. Reminds me of the movie 10,000 BC.
The few scenes with people in this movie are so slow paced it is almost painful to suffer through. The symphonic accompaniment was better than the long periods of painful noise... and I do mean noise "literally" which did not help the agonizingly slow-paced movements of the actors in the scenes... the majority of which had no dialog at all. Nearly the entire movie was nothing but noise and flashing lights with a few special effects of drawn out spacecraft scenes. (The NASA channel is better than this and they move a lot faster IRL).
The only decent portion of the entire movie was the Hal9000 about midpoint. The actors were terrible, but the computer ran off with all the scenes. Again... it was long, drawn out, boring. The entire movie was like it was in slow motion. The long periods of loud "heavy breathing" weren't any better than the piercing noises. We were grateful when they killed off the character... just to make the noise stop.
The ending was a joke... and from what I've heard from those who read the book... the movie did not portray the fact that it was an alien lab. If it had... that might have injected some interest to it.
They should have made the movie just based on the HAL9000 computer and cut out all the rest of it... because it was truly unwatchable otherwise.
As an engineer, scientist & sci-fi buff who saw this movie when it first came out and again recently, to give it a second chance... this is one of the worst movies ever made. I still cannot believe the studio actually OK'ed this movie for production. This is not a case of "not understanding" the movie or the message. We got it. It is a case of a terrible director who had to be on an acid trip to make this boring, waste of time movie. Either that or he was creating the movie to "appeal" to the acid dropping hippie audiences of the 60's.
Those who claim what a great movie this is... remind me of those neophytes who look at a smashed tomato soup can in an art museum and acclaim it to be a "work of art." Homer Simpson has some "art" to sell to people like that. The rest of us call them "pretenders" who put on airs claiming to visualize something that isn't really there... and this is exactly what this movie is... a lot of irritating noise, psychedelic lights flashing and painfully slow scenes with nearly zero dialog except for the Hal9000 portion.
There was one other movie, which was boringly and painfully slow... it was called "Marooned" and starred Gregory Peck... but at least it had a story. You won't get a story from 2001 other than the subliminal message for which you have to read the book because they don't make it clear in the movie other than the implication that the monoliths from an alien race have something to do with intelligent life on earth.
I'm willing to bet these "Art lovers" are the same ones who contradictorily complained about the 17 minutes of special effects as the ship passed over the length of V'ger in the first Star Trek movie as being too long. Watching 2001 is like listening to the entire 19 minutes of Inagodadavida (ten times in a row).
If you like having your brain pounded with irritating noise and psychedelic lights with no story and very little dialog then this movie is for you. Otherwise, it is a waste of time.