The picture is razor sharp, visually the film stands up to the best even by today’s standards. Unfortunately the story and pacing leave much to be desired. This movie is loooooooooooooooooooong!! The pacing is slower than hell, the plot devices are clever but ultimately pointless because it takes so f*cking long for this film to make its point. This is three hours of my life that I wish I could get back.

I can’t help but think that this film is the product of a different era, where this sort of pacing and subtle plot devices were perhaps more accepted. It just does not hold up well to the way that cinema has evolved. Seriously this film could have been cut down to 90 minutes and still gotten its point across.

In short, if you value your sanity avoid watching this film.

This movie is SO DAMN SLOW! I forced myself to watch this “masterpiece” that i had wanted to see for so long, thinking it would end up a new favorite. And it was a piece… of something; every slow, drawn out, endless second of it! You could easily edit this movie down to 5 minutes.

2001: A Space Oddysey should be retitled- 2001: Real-time Space Flight Torture Test Oddysey From Hell, Prozac Edition

Example:
Wanna know how long it takes to exit a space ship for routine ship repair? FOR FU%#ING EVER!!!!!!!!!

Example:
Wanna see the same scene of the moon rotating in the same damn window framed in grey with no edit or cut away for 10 damn minutes with the same damn music playing over and OVER and OVER AGAIN?

CAN I GET AN EDIT?!?!? OR A BULLET?!?!
PLEASE?!?!?!

2001 is aggravating!!!!! I was screaming at the movie to hurry the fu%# up!!!!!!!!!!! Do I need to know (and SEE) that it takes 5 WHOLE MINUTES for a hatch to open up into space? DO I?!?!?! REALLY?!?!?!? AND HOW MANY TIMES DO I NEED TO SEE IT?!?!?!?! WAS ONCE NOT ENOUGH?!?!?!?!

Add in 30 minutes of Dave unplugging/killing HAL (sooooooooo slowly), 25 minutes of astronauts holding there helmets(?) in pain from the annoying alien dog whistle/radio signal with accompanying choir/orchestra music (scene does NOT CHANGE EVER!!!!), a 40 minute trip thru a crayon-colored time-warped hyperspace Dr. Who tunnel with still shots of Dave trying out for Madonna’s “vogue” video (if you like drugs, you might like this part of the movie), and 2 or 3 months of real-time space flight (with elevator music), and you have the DULLEST MOVIE EVER MADE!!!!!

I dont know what was harder to watch, 2001:a space oddysey or an episode of the Teletubbies. I love Bladerunner, even though it is slow at time, its one of my favorite movies. This one sucks badly!!!

CLOSEUP: giant sperm shaped (see implications later) space ship moves across screen (25mins)

PANORAMA: Even bigger phallic shiped space suit moves across screen (35mins)

PAN LEFT: Tall but very narrow mysterious black object stand still and issues weird chanting sounds, don’t touch it, it’ll scream

VOICEOVER (One of two idiot astronauts): Heavy Breathing (22 mins)

MONTAGE: Multiple shots of Oklahoma and Arizona landscapes with many different colored filters

CLOSE UP: star child (giant embryo planet)
* the sentient being that represents humanity at the dawning of a new universe is an idiot who supposed holding his breath would save him from the vacuum of space – where did he buy his degree?

There was probably a total of seven minutes of dialog in this film, half of which are delivered by a faceless computer.

It is unfortunate that this is the first SF Stanley Kubric film I have seen but I can’t even imagine watching another one without a burning desire to overdose myself on vicodine. If ever you were looking for a wonderfully long torturous, anti-drug advertisement, this is it!

That couldn’t be further from the truth… I prefer to watch movies that entertain rather than put people to sleep to which 2001 managed only to bore!

As for Blade Runner, it was average and the action in the movie was highly limited and mostly dull!

If you want to watch some good Sci-Fi go buy or rent the Farscape Series or maybe Check-Out something like Alien or even a Steven Spielberg Sci-Fi as his are mostly interesting and dare I say even the Star Wars IV, V and VI series would be 10x better than either BR or 2001.

As for Good Movies… Stardust, Schindler’s List and Braveheart are certainly on my list so those should give you an idea of what I qualify as good.

Quite the comedian you are. I bet your favorite movie is Rambo IV along with Police Academy VII.

Honestly though, the movie was slow, boring and extremely drawn out… This is one of those movies like Blade Runner where you wonder why people speak so highly of it but at least blade runner didn’t move along at a snails pace!