Review! 2001: A Space Odyssey!

OK, I’m finding it hard to start this review... So I’m going to sum up my thoughts as I watched it. Here we go!

“OK, so, this is interesting. Monkeys! Alright...”
“Going on a bit, isn’t it?”
“Aw, shit! A big black thing! A monolith, one might say! Now shit just got interesting!”
“The monkeys are learning to use clubs... Ooh and a bit of the old ultra violence!”
“Oooooooh space and classical music!”
“Nice, a lot of space and science. Obviously well researched.”
“A base is cut off? Wow and this guy’s into it? Not at Liberty to say? FUCK!”
“Alright... he’s going to the moon... It’s taking a while...”
“He’s at the moon! Shit, that is some creepy music. Ooh, there’s the black monolith... But why is it on the moon? Wow, a sci-fi mystery!”
“18 months later? Alright... Wonder what happened. Oh, a guy started jogging... OK.”
“He’s still going.”
“He gets breakfast with another guy.”
“Explanatory dialogue through a BBC interview. Alright...”
“Ooh, HAL! I know this guy from the many references in other films and TV shows!”
“All very interesting now, we have some paranoia! I wonder why it’s going insane. IS it on purpose? IS it linked to the monoliths? It sort of looks like one!”
“That was over pretty fast...”
“Aw, shit! Crazy colourful montage! A floating monolith in Spaaaaaaaace!”
“Still going.”
“And... still going.”
“...”
“Ooh a big white room! Wait, this isn’t going to be a big conversation with God is it? Some sort of Deus Ex Machina event?”
“He gets older... eats for a bit... Keeps seeing himself in the corner of his eye. Cool!”
“Aw, he’s dying- Wait, a monolith?!? FUCK! Shit just got crazy!”
“He’s... a fetus for some reason! Oh no no, is it going to turn out to be a dream?!? Oh... end credits.”

What the fuck? There was a lot of long boring bits with classical music but I liked them for the most part. I mean, it seemed like it was building to some epic conclusion with HAL linked the monoliths or some sort of... thing behind all of it.

It was over two hours long! And most of it was long slow shots of people walking in space!

This has to be one of the worst films I’ve ever seen, simply because the ending was infuriating.

I looked it up, just to see if I was really so dumb that I missed the point. But... I didn’t. Kubrick wanted people to get their own meaning from the film, to interpret in their own way.

Seems to me there is a Deus Ex Machina event; they got lazy. Or they didn’t know how to finish it so they came up with a bullshit argument about metaphors and what have you.

No, this movie is not clever, it is not special and it is not important. It looked pretty, I’ll give you that. And the soundtrack was fantastic. And, until the last ten minutes, I was enjoying the film but the ending ruined the whole thing.

You could argue that there is no way to end a film like that in a satisfactory way. I could argue that you’re making excuses because you like Kubrick’s work.

Am I missing the point? Probably but I don’t give a fuck, this film was a perfect example of bad story telling.