Don't be fooled. The emperor is naked. And a total fraud.

Rating: 1/10 (28 November 2005)

Let's just get one thing straight: The only reason I've given this film 1 star is because the option for none isn't available. This film makes me feel ill. Here's why.
You can bandy around all the 'before-its-time' and 'visionary' platitudes you like, but the simple fact is that this film has no plot, its actors are on autopilot, its themes could have been drummed up by a four-year-old, and it's all directed with the kind of pomposity with which Stanley Kubrick was terminally afflicted.
"Kubrick? Pompous?" I hear you cry. "But what about The Shining? What about A Clockwork Orange? What of Doctor Strangelove?"
Well, let's see. The Shining is good, but only for one reason - Jack Nicholson. Without his quiet madness and eventual raving, axe-wielding, snarling, cackling insanity, this film would just be an hour and a half of slow tracks through corridors broken up by scenes of people you couldn't give a damn about.
A Clockwork Orange? Boring. The book is superior (as was The Shining, now I think about it). Humourless, dull, meaningless and dangerously close to juvenilia. Fourteen-year-old boys love this because people get hurt with sticks and there are boobs in it.
Doctor Strangelove? Ah. Now I come to a problem, because Strangelove is a great film. However, I make no apology for saying that it's a great film DESPITE Kubrick, not BECAUSE of him. Peter Sellers is excellent in all three of his roles, George C. Scott is an acting powerhouse, and Sterling Hayden is a joy. The story is from a novel by Peter George. Kubrick brings nothing to the party.
So, I think it's fair to say that Kubrick is a mediocre director with delusions of grandeur who rode to stardom on the back of exceptional performances from actors far better than he deserved. He wasn't a visionary. He was a hack.
Now, back to 2001: Overrated Excrement. Sorry, I meant A Space Odyssey. That's another thing: comparing this dross to The Odyssey is like trying to make people believe 'Ernest Saves Christmas' is on a cultural par with Alfred Lord Tennyson.
I started out a few paragraphs ago trying to explain why this film is so bad. Let me try again. There are a few themes in this, but they really boil down to these visionary gems:
1. People are bad to each other. 2. Technology is evil. 3. There is more in the universe than we can see.
Hmm. Even in 1968 these theories were old hat. So, needless exploration of thoroughly explored themes aside, why else is this film pathetic? Well, the acting is sub-par for one. Keir Dullea's performance as Dave the Astronaut was practically non-existent. The film would have been much the same if he'd been replaced by a houseplant. Possibly better. And he was the protagonist. The film had to hinge on him and a computer, apparently voiced by somebody on massive amounts of lithium. Understated and slowly unnerving or just dull? I know which one I think. I like slow burners. I much prefer the build-up of tension to the shoddy action fluff made famous by the Bruckheimer/Affleck pairing, but this film has no tension. It has no build-up. It has nothing.
The oft-heralded special effects are nothing special, even allowing for the thirty-five year time gap. The universally fawned-over shot of the bone turning into the spaceship actually made me embarrassed at its ineffectiveness. It was definitely amateur-hour at Stanley's house when they cobbled that together. The use of classical music is decidedly underwhelming. The 'Ballet In Space' scene with the ships spinning around each other set to Strauss's Blue Danube Waltz looks like an episode of Battlestar Galactica with the wrong soundtrack. Frank Poole floating off into space after being killed By HAL looks like a little plastic action figure being flushed down the toilet. The ape at the beginning who hurls the afore-mentioned bone into the air looks like a hired strippogram. Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.
You know what? I've had enough of reviewing this rubbish. It doesn't deserve a detailed critique. It deserves to be put out of its misery with a hammer to the temple.
I can't urge you strongly enough not to waste your precious time on this god-awful film. I hate it with a passion born not of misunderstanding, but adherence to the idea that a film should not, under any circumstances, be a chore to watch through virtue of its extreme tediousness and pomposity.
I stuck through this until the end (even past the ludicrous ending that lasted for about four hours) and gave it every chance to redeem itself. At the end, I sat back, disgusted, and felt a deep sense of gratitude that Stanley Kubrick had gone to a better place - a place where he couldn't do this type of damage again.
This film is utterly without merit. Kubrick should be ashamed, and so should you for watching it. If you haven't watched it yet (and I sincerely hope you haven't), please, please, please don't do it. I'd rather you watch Affleck than this drivel.
Well, perhaps not, but you get the idea.