In Space Everything Is... Very, Very Slow...

Rating: 3/10 (18 February 2002)

I do not understand the appeal of this movie. Yes, it's beautiful to look at, and at the time the special effects must have been absolutely dazzling because they're still pretty good by today's standards, but man oh man this seriously might be the dullest film I have ever seen. Don't get me wrong, I like long movies, and my attention span is definitely not short, but there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING driving this film: no plot, no characters, no revelations, no statements, no themes. It's like an absence of experience... except the experience of watching perfectly shot but painstakingly slow models and people moving through cool looking but not-cool-enough-to-just-look-at-forever starscapes and spaceship sets. As is often the case with Kubrick movies (THE SHINING be a big exception, and thus brilliant), there is virtually no character development or depth, but in this film even the actors seem to be moving through a daze where they can't register emotions or be any more interesting than the auteur's concept so you can't even enjoy this film for the performances- which mind you, aren't bad, just totally non-existant, as if they were afraid of detracting, somehow, from all the really slow moving models of space stations. Ultimately that sentiment sums up my feelings about this movie as a whole: not bad, certainly there seems to be some merit because everything is so pretty and done with such seriousness, but finally, in the end, there isn't really anything to enjoy here or latch onto- even the wonderment of space seems sort of lackluster once all the trippy visuals begin and then the movie segues into a lame, psuedo-mysterious ending. You never really care about the people being presented- what happens to them, what they're thinking about, etc- and thus, it's really hard to care about the ideas, let alone the virtually non-existant and mostly unexplained story. Good art should make you care- be that in a positive or negative way- and this movie just leaves me totally cold. It's beautiful, but utterly and totally hollow, glossed over with a heavy dose of dull.