It hasn't aged well.

Rating: 5/10 (14 November 2004)

I'd heard a lot of hype about this movie, so I finally decided to see it for myself, with the rest of my family. The rest of my family walked out with an hour to go, leaving only me to finish watching this movie. Not that I liked it much better, but I simply believe in giving something a fair chance before I make judgment on it.
Let me just say then that this movie has not aged well at all.
The famous first scene (the one with the monkeys) was to me dumb, insulting, and overlong. I wasn't offended by the "Darwinism"; it's just that I've seen much more realistic depictions of our ancestors in documentaries like "Walking with Prehistoric Beasts". By contrast, the shrieking and gnawing monkeys here just looked completely silly. The next hour or so seemed to me to be just an interlude to show "special effects" ("A waitress walking upside down! Woohoo they're going to LO-OVE THIS one, so why don't we dedicate an entire 5 minutes of screen time to showcasing this special effect!") and put in lots of useless "talking characters". The cinematography was completely uninspired; it mostly consisted of leaving a camera in one place. Just absolutely pathetic and boring.
The film did reach "masterpiece" status briefly during the scenes within the spaceship on its way to Saturn; the movie moves slowly but surely here, the suspense builds, and we are made to realize the tremendous enormity and emptiness of space.
This section of the movie (lasting about 1 hour or so) would get a 9/10 from me.
The movie ends with a psychedelic head-trip which is probably largely the reason that the movie is so famous. Finally, it ends with an allegory that for me was almost impossible to decipher the first time I watched it... and I'm not willing to watch it again.
Honestly, I think that this movie is extremely overrated! My suggestion for an alternative movie to see would be "Solaris (1972)" by Andrei Tarkovsky, a Russian director who reportedly made his film as a response to "2001", which he hated for its lack of humanity. In Solaris, it is the innermost problems of humanity that are the most important, even (especially) in the vastness and remoteness of outer space. Tarkovsky's cinematography is original and unique, in contrast to the dull camera motions of "2001". Solaris is probably my favourite movie of all time!
I'd give 2001 "5/10". While the middle of the movie is brilliant, the rest of it is really uninspired, and terrible to watch. It's interesting only as a historical artifact.