Now i can understand why the film won only a single Oscar.

Rating: 2/10 (15 July 2012)

I started to admire the works of Kubrick at the age of 14 after seeing the movie Dr. Strangelove. And after seeing Full Metal Jacket, I became a fan of Kubrick. Then I was in my high school Cinema Studies class and the teacher showed us this movie. I've always wanted to see it because it had Kubrick as the director and I heard it was his best film. I was aware that it was a slow movie, but that didn't bother me. Little did I know that it would be one of the most boring and most pretentious films I have ever seen.
Before the fans of this film flame me, let me explain. I wasn't expecting a film like Star Wars. I was looking for a film that had a good storyline and characters that were interesting to watch. This film didn't have that. There was no storyline and the characters were really empty and void with no personality at all. That's not even the worst part. The worst part is the pacing. Now I love watching slow paced movies, but they need to have something going on that will keep me interested in what's going on. This movie didn't have that. You can take out about 70% of this film and not be missing any plot points whatsoever. A lot of the shots are either of spaceships floating in space, spaceships landing (very slowly), stars and planets, or landscapes. I'm sorry, but I expected to see a film, not a slideshow of art.
Now there is one thing that I can say good about this movie, and that's the visual effects. For 1968, they are absolutely fantastic and still hold up pretty well and the Oscar it received is very well deserved.
The overall problem with this movie is that it tries to hard to be intelligent. This isn't a problem necessarily, but if you don't have something to keep me interested in what's going on besides the pretty special effects, then you're insulting your audience and that's what 2001 does.
If you wanna watch a film that is both entertaining and genuinely intelligent, watch the original Planet of the Apes. It came out in the same year, has a slow pace, but it has 2 things that it has over this movie, an engrossing story, and well fleshed out characters.
Overall 2/10