Thomas Gillespie

I had a good laugh. Edgy for its time, I guess, but thoroughly wearisome for ours. The endless replay of Martians in their green velvet coveralls and soldiers in khaki running through tunnels made me want to gouge my eyes out. How many times can you reuse a shot before you drive your audience to psychosis? The final scene with the little boy-brat running with flashbacks on the screen also made me want to run to the toilet and release my last meal - but not before giving that kid a good slapping for his endless do-good alarmism. Seen it once - never have to watch it again.

This movie is mired in the politics of the time (mid 1980s) which means it does not age well. The 2001: A Space Odyssey movie, upon which this 2010 film is based, was free of politics and addressed timeless and universal themes - which means it's still fresh today. That cannot be said of this movie, watching which is like taking a time machine back to the era of mullets, track suits, and big hair. Spoiler alert: Also, it's extremely implausible that the "two suns", the culminating event of the movie, is the panacea for the world's troubles that the film proposes. Having perpetual sunlight would probably wreak havoc with the world's ecosystem, which has evolved in a diurnal/nocturnal system. Helen Mirren is also unusually ridiculous in her role as the hard-boiled Russian mission leader and pilot - from her execrable Russian accent to her absurd frizzy permed hair, she reeks of "I'm just here as a mid-1980s feminist icon with no other dramatic value!" A particularly risible scene is when the Russian vessel does some kind of dangerous slingshot maneuver around Jupiter and Roy Scheider cuddles up with a wee cutey Russian crew member for comfort, exchanging a quick kiss afterwards - a scene that comes out of nowhere in the plot and goes nowhere the rest of the movie. Why? And a monstrous red herring in the film is the American computer expert with a serious (and laughable) emotional crush on HAL 9000. The character's bizarre attachment to the computer leads you to think that he will scuttle the whole mission to save HAL from destruction, but he doesn't in the end and HAL is consigned to space oblivion.

Wildly improbable, utterly ridiculous, politically predictable (i.e., all the evil right-wing military types), saturated with plot holes. The movie is fantasy garbage, Hollywood at its worst. Just a waste of time.

Incredibly slow-paced, 2 hrs 46 minutes of dreariness, confusing plot, characters with unknown motivations, uninspiring Morriscone score (his worst ever). I slogged through it once, will never watch it again.

Huge letdown of a movie. The alien monsters (sort of floating octopuses) are peripheral to the story of the budding romance of the male/female leads, but they're totally uninteresting themselves, so the whole movie is a huge disappointment. I also never figured out why the gas masks are so important, though I was too bored to care.

Visually lavish, but an perversely stiff and lifeless movie. Ryan O'Neal is terrible, moving through the film like a block of wood. He evokes neither sympathy or antipathy - he's just boring. The deathbed scene with his character's son is the most forced bit of drama I've ever seen. Have plenty of coffee with you when you watch this - you'll need it to stay awake through it's interminable 3 hour run time.

Tedious, over long (almost 3 hours), hackneyed, trite, totally predictable, with a couple of overpaid blowhards (Pacino, De Niro) who seem to think they just show their aging faces on the screen and everyone will scream, "ohh, masterpiece!" - and people do.