Brilliant and Thought-provoking, but an Absolute Bore

Rating: 3/10 (9 January 2015)

Before I explain why I disliked this movie so much, I want to make a couple comments about what this movie did right. First off, this movie is extremely deep and thought-provoking. The ending, and the whole lead up to it throughout the movie, was smart and carefully crafted. I won't even pretend that I knew what the ending was trying to say, because I probably don't. Also for a movie from the late 60's, the visuals were stunning.
Both of these aspects made the movie beautiful, and at the same time made you strain your brain to determine the meaning behind every shot and every scene. However that's just the reason I hated it. I knew that when I started up the movie and was greeted to 3 minutes of blackness accompanied by a grating, ear-splitting horrible sound that they deemed "music", I was going to be in for an awful ride.
2001 A Space Odyssey isn't a movie, it's an art gallery. You're sitting there watching scene after scene of an astronaut or a spaceship just floating in space. Beautiful, but painfully boring. This was the first time I have ever fast-forwarded through sections of movie because I was so bored. The best part was even though I did this I never missed anything. There is so much useless fluff in this movie you could probably skip an entire scene and still not miss a beat. As I said, the effects in this movie were amazing for it's time, but it's been almost 50 years. You can't just stick a series of pretty space shots up and expect it to hold up over time without any compelling story to carry the movie.
And here is the other reason this isn't a movie. There is barely a shred of a story, or characters, or excitement or anything else that you need to make an actual good movie. The plot was laughably non- existent. There was barely a moment of excitement or suspense during the whole movie. The characters were also laughably poor. Undeveloped, stale, and utterly boring like the rest of the movie. A movie should be beautiful, and it should make you think, but it also should be so many other things that 2001 A Space Odyssey just wasn't.
The funny part is the only actual interesting character was an AI Robot called Hal. He provided the only interesting character and the only suspenseful and exciting moment of the entire movie. If not for the whole section of the movie Hal was in, I don't think I would have been able to even finish it. He's the only reason I thought about giving this movie more than 1 star.
If you like artsy movies, or if you like movies that really make you think, you will like this movie. It's perfect for pretentious people who can go around and pretend they completely understood the ending after watching it the first time. That way they can go and tell all their friends about it and sound super smart. However, if you want to sit down to have a good time and be entertained. If you want to watch an actual movie with deep characters, a beautiful score, excitement, suspense, and emotion, then you picked the wrong movie. You will quickly find it has none of these things.