I'm a fan of art-house movies, but this was just dull

Rating: 4/10 (2 January 2007)

Most American/Hollywood material is far too shallow for my taste and I love many slow "artsy" movies from the likes of Wenders or Fassbinder. But I have to say, even after watching 2001 with an open mind now and the suspicion in the back of my head that I might have been too young to understand it when I first saw it about one and a half decades ago, this movie just does not deliver. Main problems:
1. What creativity, symbolism or beauty is supposed to lie in painfully slow sequences of someone using technical appliances?
2. The kaleidoscope effects, inverse images etc. towards the end were playing for far too long. Overusing such effects comes across as rather primitive.
3. Most of the acting was plain bad. I did like the voice acting for HAL though.
4. I don't want to sound like a Trekkie, but a computer with full control over the whole ship with no easily accessible manual override is an unbelievable concept. Plus the supposed infallibility even though the machine was created and programmed by fallible human beings. I could accept it if I could see an artistic reason for this, but I don't. It appears like some standard sci-fi component of the time thrown into the mix.
My rating: 4 of 10 for some good cinematography and a (mostly unsuccessful) hint of artistic endeavor.