Painfully Slow

Rating: 6/10 (1 June 2014)

Now, before I get bashed for not being appreciative of classic cinematography and old movies - let me make this disclaimer clear: I've watched and enjoyed old, classic films right down to silent films and those were more stimulating than 2001. Films from the 60's that I've enjoyed include Lawrence of Arabia. I am also not unfamiliar with Stanley Kubrick's works, ex: A Clockwork Orange.
But this... this was way too slow for me. I feel like most of the movie is watching some spacecraft or other slowly float through space to the tune of a slowed-down version of the Blue Danube Waltz. I fell asleep twice trying to watch the movie from start to finish and the third time I only managed to get through the whole thing by watching it in bits and pieces. The parts where there are dialogue and action were interesting, but if you take out all the long segues, the movie would probably only be half an hour. And then by the end of it all, I felt like I just got out of a massive LSD trip (Yay 60's cinema!)
Don't get me wrong - the film is packed with symbolism... and even though the film is about the future, there are a lot of historical, philosophical and visual quirks that make it very open to interpretation. On first viewing, I personally picked up allusions to the Cold War, and I see this film as kind of a historical representation of the race-to-space feeling of the 60's. I'm personally interested in reading the novel so I can get more out of it. But the movie itself... This is one of those films that has the potential for watching multiple times and getting something different from it every time, but alas... it's just such an effort to watch that I don't think I could do it. Just being honest.