A strange mixture of horrible and awesome

Rating: 1/10 (12 September 2010)

This movie contains some very well made, interesting and realistic parts, but in overall I still regret spending my time to watch it, because unfortunately the rest of the film is totally awful, and as a whole it makes no sense at all. At first a large black stone(?) slab seems to have some important role (first it enlightens some prehumans, then astronauts find it and research about it) then after about one third of the movie we never hear about it again, it loses it's importance in the plot and a completely different story starts. At least this other story makes sense, except for it's ending which is a total nonsense again - even worse than the first part, because here you don't even know what's going on, it's totally random and has not much (as nothing) to do with the story it should end. The parts that worth watching are between the parts I mentioned before. I'll write more about them later. Apart from not making sense this movie will try your patience in other ways too, especially in it's first half. For example the film-score is horrible. Not just because that music sounds very bad, but also because it's style is never appropriate to the actual scene of the movie. For example many times there is a dramatic music when actually nothing special happens. Then there are parts, very long ones in which absolutely nothing happens. You are to watch an empty desert for long minutes, a spaceship docking for at least 10 minutes and probably other such things I don't remember. During these scenes of course you can listen that "masterpiece" film-score I just wrote about. (Some say that docking scene is the best part because "it's so artistic and beautiful" - well maybe I would agree with them to some degree if it wasn't longer than 2 minutes, but too much is too much!) Now let's get back to the part I wrote about that it worths watching. It's the part which pictures a space mission to some distant place (I don't remember where) - hence the title. It is surprisingly realistic: there is weightlessness everywhere in the ship except for a large block witch rotates to provide gravity; outside the ship(s) there is gravely silence, the route takes years - so most of the crew are hibernated; and when a TV station from Earth makes an interview with the (awake) crew members they tell the viewers that it takes minutes for their question to reach the spaceship (and also the answer to reach Earth). They must have used some experts to design this, it totally lacks those fancy but unrealistic stuffs we got used to in the modern sci-fis. If this was the whole movie it would worth much more than like this. But it gets screwed too when the computer, Hal makes a small mistake and many very illogical decisions ensue from both its and the crews part!