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Rating: 5/10 (10 February 2006)

If you're the kind of person who has time to watch grass grow, please feel free to sit down and watch every moment of this film. If you're just doing a report on it, rent the DVD and print this summary so you can follow it along. It is sacrilegious to say this film is not the most amazing, perfect, beautiful film to ever have been made, so I won't say it... The effects are okay, and most hold up, but the sheer length of it is silly and the "grooviness" and "heavy" themes are not as interesting as people want to pretend. But then again, I was born after we landed on the moon. There's my review (Okay Space Odyssey lovers! There's your cue to click Not Helpful!!). Here's a summary: Opening Scene: "pre-human" beings encounter a black rectangular Something-er-other known as "The Monolith" and it transforms the primitives into tool-wielding smart guys.
Act 1: Moon astronauts dig up The Monolith (40-feet below the surface of the Moon) and when sunlight hits the surface of it, it emits this horrible sound, which you the audience are supposed to figure out is a signal to the planet Jupiter (perhaps where the "owners" of The Monolith live or want their messages forwarded to at any rate) So: The Monolith that made the Apes smart has been found in a place that only very smart humans could have gotten to. End Act 1.
Act 2: Dave and Frank are now on their way to Jupiter. A lot of gee-whiz showing off of technical stuff follows. The on-board computer HAL 9000 fakes like there is a problem with a certain device. Dave and Frank who are "awake" (the other astronauts are in hibernation) work together; one inside and the other outside (EVA: Extra-Vehicular-Activity) to fix the device. They both conclude that there is nothing wrong with it and are suspicious that HAL 9000 is full of it. They confer in what they think is private and tell each other frankly that HAL might have to be unplugged since he's gone wacky. Unbeknownst to either guy HAL can read their lips through the window of where they are talking and sees that they are going to deactivate his ass. So he tricks them into going outside into space. He kills Frank and locks Dave outside. While Dave figures out a way to get back inside the craft without his blood boiling, or him freezing to death (this sequence does kick butt, I have to admit)from exposure to space, HAL powers down the life support on the others in hibernation, killing them all. Once back inside, Dave immediately drops the powerful HAL down to Threat Level Zero. A video flickers on stating that the mission to Jupiter is secret and there is some freaky stuff going on there.
ACT 3: Dave encounters The Monolith floating around out by Jupiter. He goes on some looooooooonnggggg ride through a bunch of lights and comes out very aged at the end in a weird "house." He turns and sees himself even older, then older still. Then, reaching out from his death bed, he sees The Monolith. Which "renews" him as a fetus. The end.