Typical Bloated Kubrick Nonsense About Absolutely Nothing

Rating: 1/10 (11 May 2010)

I really detest Stanley Kubrick. This so-called "great" director made exactly three good movies in his entire career: LOLITA, DR STRANGELOVE, and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. The first one was pretty conventional Hollywood fare, the second a brilliant, jet-black comedy about the Cold War that hit every nail right on the head, and the third a brilliant but extremely unpleasant film adapted, I am told faithfully, from Anthony Burgess's dystopian novel.
That's all she wrote, folks. Three good movies and he's a great director.
Who decides these things, anyway? He made a mishmash out of Stephen King's brilliant novel THE SHINING in 1980, so obsessed with his own cleverness and "vision" that he simply ripped the guts out of King's work and replaced it with basically a lot of stunning visuals signifying nothing.
Which brings us to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. I remember reading somewhere that back in its day it was the fashionable thing to watch this movie stoned.
I can see why. There's a plot here somewhere, but I can't find it. All I see are a bunch of disjointed scenes, all of which are either beautiful or at least interesting to look at, but which tell you nothing.
Keir Dullea, a talented actor who was cruelly misused by Hollywood, appears stoned himself for much of the proceedings (perhaps he was, it WAS 1968 after all). In fact, at the end of the day, the best performance in the entire cast was given by Douglas Rain as the voice of the maniacal HAL9000 computer.
And as usual with Kubrick, the thing is interminable; at nearly two and a half hours, it screams for a pair of scissors, or perhaps a machete.
Are people so afraid of appearing dumb that if they find a movie incomprehensible they automatically assume it must be a work of genius? I don't know. What I do know is that Stanley Kubrick was a director who spent most of his career creating wonderful visuals. But that is it. Most of his films are all style and no substance. This one is one of the worst.
How this film made the AFI's #1 spot as the premiere film in the sci-fi genre is a mystery that I shall never understand. This movie is pure dreck from start to finish.