Yeah I know, this is a Sci-Fi classic. And it consistently ranks high on the "all-time Sci Fi" lists. And it's a thinking man's film. And it's film art. And it's an epic drama of adventure and exploration.. and... and... Blade Runner, it ain't. And not only do I not like it, I do not understand how anyone else does.
So, I'm not saying this film doesn't deserve respect for it's imagery and cinematography. But it's not a movie. It's like art, that you look at, and ponder, then go home. It's based on a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, who actually also worked on the screenplay. Now I have always said that short stories make the best screenplay adaptions. Well written novels are too deep to translate well to film (see the Borne Identity), but this is the outlier. Go ahead, see it. Once. But this movie is not like Casablanca or The Seven Samurai, where you can watch it once or twice every year and not get tired of it. Watching this film is exhausting.
It starts with some monkeys, some of which are one color and some another. Then a big monolith shows up and the monkeys learn how to kill. Millions of years later, people end up on a space outpost. They discover a monolith. It kills them with radio waves. Then Dave and his computer HAL travel through space to Jupiter, and HAL goes totalitarian tech on Dave, killing everybody but Dave. Dave kills HAL, then flies to Jupiter finding another monolith. The monolith turns Dave into a Space Baby. The End.
I mean, that's it, really. The special effects are striking, and the soundtrack is plenty of classical music, but it's not a story. It's art. And it's good for art. But don't tell me it rates with Blade Runner, or even the Road Warrior. Yeah, I know people are going to throw rotten tomatoes at me. Let them. This movie reminds me of movies like "Gone with the Wind", that are not remotely enjoyable, but are classics, and everyone is supposed to see and like.
Or the Shakespeare stories you had to read in high school, because that's what you were supposed to do, and all the smart kids could quote it, and if you didn't you were just a toad.
I suppose, to be fair, this movie did strike a cord in some viewers about the meaning of human existence, but bear in mind that the movie came out in 1968, and most of the people that were lauding it's greatness probably smoked 5 or 6 bong fulls of weed first. The 60s did that: gave us movies like 2001, and The Shooting with Jack Nicholson (the first psychedelic western), that we weren't supposed to criticize or dislike. I'm sorry. I like movies about the triumph of the human spirit as well, but when you introduce a giant monolith as what is supposed to be god, and mix it up with some metaphysical representation of life, death, rebirth, death, rebirth, you lost me.
Of course movies are supposed to make us think. You will think plenty (or at least you should) when you wonder is Atticus Finch going to be able to successfully defend a man that no one wants to stand up for? Or if you are on a jury and have to decide if a kid from the slums is any more capable of killing than anyone else is, because of where he came from? Or a manager of an aging boxer wringing every dime out of the man he is supposed to be representing, giving him the most humiliating of assignments, in the name of profit? How do we treat each other? That's the question.
Maybe 2001 is way too high above my consciousness level to be of any use to me, but I'm not going to smoke 5 bongs of weed to find out.
IMDB 8.3/10. As art yes. As a film, 4.3/10.