A Space Oddity

Rating: Null/10 (27 April 2000)

I've noticed that these days, "2001: A Space Odyssey" has become somewhat like the story of the emperor's new clothes. All important critics and movie fans are somewhat like the tailors, who are trying to convince everyone that this film is a great, colorful masterpiece, when any child can see it's more akin to a pair of undies. The fact is, this movie is a pain to watch the entire way through. It might better be classified under the horror section, for 3 days after I'd seen it, I was still trying to ease my brain with the mantra that it was just a movie, and not a piece of propaganda from a Russian concentration camp. The most painful part of this movie is the realization that you could be watching absolutely anything and it would mean the same thing, for as Kubrick admits, the whole film means nothing. You could be watching pieces of fried chicken floating downstream in slow motion to the tune of Mary Had a Little Lamb and it would have the same significance in the movie as spaceships docking to the "Blue Danube." All and all, you'd better just rent it, so you can appease the "tailors" of our age and say you've actually seen it, but like them when they are at home by themselves, out of the limelight, you can admit it was the absolute worst movie ever made and that you wish some important man would just yell out, like Rock Hudson at its premiere "Would someone tell me what the ---- this is about?"