This is one tedious film

Rating: 2/10 (2 January 2001)

(Yes there are spoilers... a bit)
I'm sure I saw this film as a child, but couldn't remember much of it aside from the images of people walking around the circumference of the space ship, and HAL's 'eye'.
I have just finished watching it again and have to say that I was really bored out of my mind.
Obviously there is something special about this film for some people, as the comments here and the overall rating of it are testament to... but I don't see it at all.
I see: *Some quite impressive images of space flight for a film from 1968 *Some VERY long sequences where VERY LITTLE occurs *Some character setup which went absolutely no-where... (what was the point of showing us so much of the doctor who was on his way to the moon to then have him completely disappear after the visit to the monolith? I'm sure it's just another way of us being dispassionate towards the human characters or something but I just found it annoying to learn about a character and then have him disappear...) *Some extremely irritating jumps with no explanation to seemingly un-connected scenes... *And that damn final journey sequence... what's so amazing about a bunch of solarized images of the grand canyon and water? It really quite under whelmed me.
I was extremely bored by the whole experience, but I am NOT going to fall into the wonderful trap that I've read a few others here have, which is to insult anyone that has a different view to themselves. Especially to the person who stated that if you didn't like the film you weren't alive... that's a beautiful way to view the world. "If you disagree with my viewpoint then you're a soulless being" Brilliant.
All I'm saying is that I have no idea why this film is hailed as a classic, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be... I just don't see it myself.