Intergalactic travel, filmed in real-time.

Rating: 8/10 (2 June 2001)

I was a high-school student when this film was released in the Sixties, and the word around town was, "get stoned, and go see this movie." Under the circumstances, "2001" became a nearly transcendental experience.
Fast forward to the actual year 2001. Now middle-aged and sober, I see that "2001" was a lot better stoned. Still, the movie has much to recommend. It is mostly a visual banquet, the soundtrack is full of lovely classical music, and it is something of a treat to watch it realizing that it was the first major sci-fi movie with good enough special effects to make outer-space and its appurtenances seem real. But it is maddeningly slow-paced, especially for the first hour. The best actor is HAL, the computer, easily more facially expressive than Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood. And the plot, such as it is, seems pretentious and absorbed with a by-now very silly cosmology, which, while fictional, fails to retain any attractiveness in the post-Timothy-Leary era.
Keep an eye out for amusing anachronisms in this Sixties vision of the high-tech future. Evidently, apart from Dick Tracy's 2-way wrist TV, no Sixties futurists could envision the profound miniaturization of electronics which was on the doorstep. Hence, all the big, really clunky looking gadgets in this film. You get the impression that your laptop could replace most of one of their space stations. Interestingly, too, the filmmakers chose to continue the Cold War into their future world.