2001: An Ode to Stanley Kubrick, by Stanley Kubrick

Rating: 2/10 (1 September 2009)

It's utter sophomoric tripe. Kubrick thinks the audience are absolute idiots. He focuses on a thing - then on what it represents. then on the thing. then on what is represents, then on the thing. Repeat, ad nauseum. The man can't direct for toffee. Oh yes, the special effects are good, some of the ideas in the movie are good - but the movie fails because it is utterly boring, drowning in Kubrick's own self obsession. People go on and on about the technical minutiae - like that's genius - to show the boring bits everyone else edits out - BECAUSE THEY'RE BORING! 2001 is 20 minutes of a good film stretched out over 3 hours! I am an avid reader and watcher of sci-fi. I love the genre because it provokes you to think. This movie was not thought-provoking, but sleep inducing, and caused me not to ponder the human condition, but instead how Kubrick got away with producing the navel-gazing piece of self-adulation. It practically cries out "look at me! look how clever I am! I can do things no one else does and get away with it because I am clever!" (Seems he did get away with it with all the fawning adulation he's got over the years!)