2001: A Space HORROR! (spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (26 November 2002)

After reading and rereading the original story on which it was based about 20 times and comparing it to the movie, I have finally, FINALLY made some sense of the plot. But enduring this movie is still an excruciatingly long, terrible, horrible, painful experience. You know you're in trouble when you find yourself plugging up your ears, AND THE MOVIE HASN'T EVEN STARTED YET!!! It's just the "overture", folks. That's nothing. The real terror is yet to come...
(Forgive me if some of the events are in the wrong order, I haven't seen this movie for about 7 years)
Our movie starts in, uh, 1 million BC?! Yes folks, and there's the sterotypical ape-people (Homo Erectus, I beleive) running around, eating roots, and getting eaten by wolves. Suddenly a big shiny tennis table...I MEAN *MONOLITH!* appears, and the ape-people pray treat it like a god. A minute later one ape-man finds out how to kill things with a blunt object! Yay! I discovered meat! He throws his weapon in the air....
AND WE SUDDENLY CUT TO 2001 AD! And a spaceship that looks oddly like the bone our caveman friend threw in the air earlier. Cue the videophone and the nasal-voiced girl who wants a BUSHBABY for her birthday.
A crew discovers the monolith on the moon. They then send ANOTHER crew of astronauts (?) to pick up the monolith. HAL, the ship's computer, kills a few hibernating astronauts. He basically says it was an accident. Yeah right HAL. More bad stuff happens. The hero shuts down HAL in slow motion, and the maniac computer emits the clumsiest speech I have ever heard. It's like a man with a head wound reading cue cards. The hero escapes and....
INTERMISSION!! WHAT?! NOW?! NOOOOOOOOOO!
Now, for no reason at all, the film goes into about 20 minutes of swirling, bubbling, ear-and-eyeball sprinkled BAD ACID TRIP, WETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT. This is the point at which some people feel that the movie is sorta pushing it. GEE REALLY?! WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CLUE???
After pushing the fast-forward button what seems like forever, we see the equally bizarre ending. Astronaut in fancy-pants room turns into old man, dies, turns into baby, floats out into space, credits roll. It's insane. But that's Kubrick for ya.