A short, mundane and self-absorbed story about the only Sci-Fi film ever made.

Rating: 10/10 (4 December 1998)

Many people talk about how many times they've seen a particular movie as evidence of it's greatness.
I've seen 2001 twice.
I hired it out from the video store when I was about 13 (about 6 short years ago), and it blew my mind. Sure, it was technically sophisticated, but how was it that such a great reputation was bestowed on a film that was honestly just so weird-ass and boring???
No dialogue for half an hour!
F***ing apes running around hitting each other, and throwing sticks in the air!
A mildly interesting segment with a mean-ass pod thing that tries to eat a spaceman, and a rad bit where one jumps into outer space, closes the door and all the sound turns on was the highlight of the movie.
Then more bullshit!
Weird noises and whines!
Ten or twenty (felt like a hundred) minutes of flashing lights! Wakes up in an old room with an old man with a glass of wine! THEN A GIANT FLOATING PLANET BABY!!!
WHAT WAS THIS BULLSHIT????
This film LOOKED good, but made no sense whatsoever! And when a film made no sense when I was 13, I got bored! And when a film gets boring, that usually means it's ROOTED!!!
My sister watched the film at about the same time, and I distinctly remember walking in during the movie's final moments and finding her sitting upside down on her head in her chair, apparently in an attempt to prevent her natural reflexes from clicking the 'eject' button.
However, I read a bit about the film ("What's this 'rebirth of man crap', and how was I supposed to think of that?" I was thinking!) and optimistically kept a copy of the film in case it might have later value for me when I was older and wiser.
As it turned out, I never watched that tape again. The years came and went, and I saw many more movies (insert nostalgic montage sequence here), read many more reviews, and the movie even came out in a new 70mm print at a few cinemas a couple of years ago. I can't remember the occasion, but the flyer (I have it blue-tacked to the roof above my bed, I collect that sort of crap) reads "Happy Birthday Hal.", but I still couldn't bring myself to sit through it again. And eventually, I realised that I needed to see it again, simply hoping to 'get it', suspecting that if I did, I might even like it.
Then a 30th anniversary video edition came out in Widescreen, which I subsequently purchased and so it came to be that I viewed '2001: A Space Odyssey' the second time.
And it blew my mind again.
Every thing that I'd ever read about the film was right there before me, clear as day! Everything that I loved about Kubrick (by this stage I'd seen and loved Clockwork Orange, Spartacus, Full Metal Jacket, Barry Lyndon, and to a lesser extent The Shing and Lolita) was there, mechanical characters and direction expressing extraordinary themes. It was like Kubrick concentrate! I loved every single frame of the movie, it was like he'd taken every shots and scenes that grabbed me in ways I never realised why, from every movie I'd ever seen, and thrown them together in an editing suite into 2 and a bit hours worth that just happened to privilege the most important, mind-boggling, revolutionary, ambitious and all-encompassing themes ever existent.
I'd crap on about what it means, but I don't really know. I could think about it for ages, but I'd just end up at the same place again. If you want to know what it means, try reading someone else's comments here! But I don't think anybody, including Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke know totally what it means, I don't think that is possible with any movie. It reads specifically to each person who sees it, like every film or text does. And I think I should shut up soon, but not before I make a couple of points.
This is probably a rash statement, and I've been searching for holes in it and haven't found any yet. "2001: A Space Odyssey" is the only true Science Fiction movie. If you take the Sci Fi from "Star Wars" (I film I admittedly love more, it is PERHAPS my all time favorite), you're left with what? An adventure movie, part western, part Japanese samurai film. If you take the Science Fiction out of "2001", you're left with nothing. "2001" IS science fiction.
"2001: A Space Odyssey" is by critical consensus one of the best movies ever made (I'm sure you didn't know that), and one of the top five I have ever seen. I have placed the 'Keeping 2001 tape' incident as one of the wisest things I have ever done in my life, even if I ended up taping "Hamburger Hill" over it.
Thanks for reading!
I have now just realized that the time I spent writing this overlong review could have been better spent watching the movie again. Stupid internet...