Stands up to the test of time extremely well... though the channel "BBC 12" proved to be optimistic...

Rating: 9/10 (18 July 1999)

Strangely enough, I saw this film again the day after I first saw Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. One of the films is clearly superior, with outstanding direction, sound, visuals, music, plot, scripting, design and execution. And it's obviously The Phantom Menace, isn't it?
Seriously, though, 2001 is a real slap in the face for George Lucas, a film that has all it's effects constantly on show, but never to the effect that they seem ostentatious. Lucas, on the other hand, uses Phantom Menace to throw everything he's got at the camera, a mind-numbing tedium of sfx, rather like a six-year-old throwing a tantrum at jelly and ice-cream party.
2001 in comparison is elegant and sophisticated, taking it's time, showing it's effects in all their glory to an exquisite classical symphony. Beneath the visuals, which are absolutely stunning for 1968, produced on a tenth of Phantom Menace's cartoon budget, is an intricate plot. Rather surprisingly, Kubrick creates a wholly believable space backdrop, yet the men in monkey suits at the prologue look exactly like... men in monkey suits. Yet this exists as a perfect introduction, just as the psychedelia acts as a perfect coda. In the middle is the most successful element, Hal, a voice that can conjure both stolid calm and malevolence in the same monotone.

2001 is probably the most important science fiction film, taking the genre into the realms of art. And while I must apologise for reviewing The Phantom Menace almost as much as the film in question, this does serve as a very important film-watching guide: watching a terrible film before a good one enhances appreciation of the better work.