a masterful centerpiece weighed down by two varyingly less than ideal bookends

Rating: Null/10 (5 February 2012)

When reviewing this film, I like to split it into three parts: the origin of humanity (in which we include all of the monolith scenes), the space, and the nonsense sections. If it was based on just the Space portion, I would give it a perfect ten stars. The acting, lighting, tension, effects, and story are completely perfect in my eye. But it carries on its shoulders two OTHER films- one would be quite good on its own as a short, and one would be an artsy disaster. the first part, origin of humanity (ooh for short from now on), is obviously the former. The photography is nice,the costumes are fantastic even by today's very high ape-costume standards (lol wut), and the space ship landing is very beautiful. It actually manages to build very high amounts of anticipation of its monolith explanation. The worst part of this section is worrying that Kubrick could possibly handle the explanation badly. And then....he doesn't explain it. The space portion masterfully meanders its way by. Again no explanation. Then, we come upon the nonsense section. Initially its not so bad. "Kubrick is showing off a few colorful scenes to be artistic and it was amazing for the time no big deal :)". 15 minutes later, now a drooling lump with your head in your seat and legs splayed in uncomfortable directions on the floor, you have some different thoughts. if a director did anything of this sort in today's time he would be immediately and mercilessly beaten into a jellied pulp by any sensible critic, yet plenty of people actually praise Kubrick's vision. The next scene finally FINALLLLLLY sees the light of day. "OK thats over the guy is in an interesting room that kind of reminds me of minas morgul in lord of the rings lol OK they're going to explain it all now maybe even the monolith :D." Nope. In the stead of any form of explanation or answer, people teleport, age, and do strange things seemingly at random. And the glorious, glistening finale to the movie? an enormous floating baby looking intensely at the earth from a space-bound vantage. Yay. I understand fully, and even on expect plenty of occasions, that films MUST give you some questions, ideally to captivate you. But just as importantly, the film has to give you some answers, or (often requiring more film-making skill) give you the basis for your own conclusions. The third part does neither, basically wasting the audiences time, and greatly weighing down the entire film, in in my eye at least, as a result
ooh- 7 space- 10 nonsense-1