I’m now recalling that’s how I felt when I was 12 or 13 and saw it in the first release. Leaving aside the story and slow pace it’s a cinematic masterpiece. Very few films achieve that level of visual art.
OP maybe you would enjoy some Michael Bay movies instead
Skywatcher linked the Thread from a year ago. I’ll just quote my post from that Thread:
I had to Google for Michael Bay but, no. I like dialog, plot, and sometimes romantic sentiment, not “action” or visual effects. Casablanca is one of my favorites.
There are movies some would consider boring that I do like. But 2001 lacked interesting dialog as well as much in the way of plot or personal romantic sentiment. Some inthread Dopers emphasized 2001 visual effects and Cinerama, but those aren’t my things. I did read a fair amount of sci-fi in the 1960’s, perhaps so much that the sci-fi aspects of 2001 were less of an interesting novelty for me.
2001 is an interesting story, and groundbreaking special effects. It’s almost a Rohrschach test of a film. I love it, but have to be in the mood to watch it. It’s certainly not A/V wallpaper, where you can have it playing while you’re playing poker or doing the dishes or something.
At school I wrote a long essay on the trilogy (2001, 2010, 2061 - it was only a trilogy when I wrote it) and then watched both films. I was already a big fan of hard sci-fi and it seemed the best trilogy for me to plow through and write about. I remember watching the films and thinking a lot of the plot was hidden behind seemingly insignificant details, and only those who’d read and remembered the books would fully appreciate and understand what was happening.
Unfortunately my memory’s not good enough to watch 2001 today and understand it all, although possibly reading a website or two would jolt those synapses into firing again.
I was familiar with Clarke at that point (I smiled at Dave’s return to the ship in vacuum, remembering the Clarke story it was based on). But the ending is far more Kubrick than Clarke. Take away the flashy lights and there’s nothing there (Clarke’s novelization at least had some meaning to it).
The SF trappings were great to see on screen for once, but nothing particularly new in the genre. Picturephones were all over the genre. But Kubrick had no way to make a satisfying ending – a tall order, I admit – so he resorted to smoke and mirrors.
I don’t think personal insults are allowed in Cafe Society. 
Actually in thisthread, I quoted Roger Ebert saying (about the movie 2001), “Not only does it not make sense, but it is impossible to construct a scenario under which it COULD make sense.” I got politely pitted for it (in Cafe Society). I’m glad to see I’m not the only one who found the movie to be beautifully made, but a bit lacking in substance.
Tastes are subjective, and I would never presume to tell someone else what they should enjoy, or criticize them for what they like or don’t like. I think the Transformers series of movies are absolute dreck, but I see that they regularly bring in millions upon millions of dollars. And I’m not going to seek out people who watch them to tell them their movies suck. I’ll just not go see them myself.
For me, 2001 A Space Oddity is art. Meant to be immersive and engaging. When I refurbished one room of my house into a media room with a mega-expensive surround sound system and large HD screen, the first movie that I watched was 2001. Turned off the lights, cranked the sound up, muted the cell phones and other devices, and just watched.
Yes, I know the story could be told in 20 minutes. Okay, I’ll even accept that there could have been more creative endings. But, I’m okay with the length. A good meal should not be hurried through. And I’m fine with the ending. I’m fine not knowing everything, and having everything wrapped up is not how life is, so I’m okay that 2001 ended the way it did.
All this time I though Giant was the 2nd-most boring movie ever made.
Typo, humor, or autocorrect fail?
Damn autocorrect. I hate posting form my iDevice. According to some though, its actually an accurate title.
Well, since you said it first, I’d counter that that statement is the fundamental flaw in your argument. If you don’t like 2001 you’re, well, either and/or both:
[ul]
[li]An idiot, in that you’re of low intellect because the film does contain some very lofty ideas and themes and, more importantly, they are not the least bit spoon-fed to you.[/li]
[li]A philistine, in that you’re incapable of ever appreciating these concepts even if they were spelled out to you![/li][/ul]
You can call a Shakespearean play incredibly boring all you want, and that can be true for you, but don’t then make the mistake of saying that his plays are terrible and anyone who likes them is an idiot, because that will only ever have one meaning (that the idiot is you!) And it is not an exaggeration to say that Stanley Kubrick was to film what Shakespeare was to literature.
I nominate The Fountainhead. It was on this weekend…and I watched it. 
Yep. I think the pace is part of the experience. Space flight is mostly tedious. But there’s plenty else happening in the story. The ending was a bit overdone, but the idea of rebirth is pretty clear.
If you didn’t like the movie, try reading the book. I thoroughly enjoyed both.
Between you and Hail Ants, what’s with the insults? There’s a whole undisturbed middle ground here. People can be smart and sophisticated and still think the movie failed at doing what it intended.
2001 is like an abstract painting. There isn’t anything obvious there, but with careful viewing, you can “see” what the artist intended. I’ve often wondered if a movie can be made that is the equivalent of an abstract painting that is about the emotion created by looking at it, rather than what is on the canvas. I think 2001 is that film, as is, oddly enough, Lost In Translation. Neither film is about the story, they are about the feelings.
Though I do find it funny that people call 2001 “hard science fiction.” I think it is about the exact opposite. It’s more Harlan Ellison that Clarke. Just because the space travel is detailed and accurate doesn’t make it “hard”.
The OP is close. 2001 is THE most boring movie of all time. I like a slow burn, but so many parts of that film are just unnecessarily long. Like, okay, I get it that it’s supposed to create isolation seeing a guy floating in space, but it’s not unlike watching a Family Guy bit where Seth McFarlane thinks that if something isn’t funny if it’s only 5s but is if it’s 30s, then it must be funny if it’s 5 or 10 minutes long. Even in other films of Kubrik’s that I like, he demonstrates a remarkable inability to edit himself; this is just his magnum opus of failure to edit. Really, there is a difference between a slow pace and just plain nothing happening.
That said, since the OP mentions the original Ocean’s Eleven. I’ll definitely say that it’s nowhere near as good as the remake–overall I think heist films have just gotten more sophisticated–but it’s definitely nowhere near as boring as 2001. While I found the heist itself less interesting than the remake, I did find the aftermath to be an interesting twist.
Admittedly, both of these films are products of a time when films, in general, were slower paced. And to a certain extent, a lot of modern films are obsessed with a blistering pace, trying to cram so much more storytelling into less time. But even given the slower pace, 2001 was STILL at a snails pace, even given those old standards. I will say that I think that while a lot of modern blockbusters take it too far, I do generally think that somewhat faster paces than was common then is overall better storytelling. I can enjoy a long solid dialogue scene, Tarantino has basically made his career out of that, but it has to be enthralling dialogue. So much of the dialogue in 2001 is just filler; it just isn’t interesting. I would have much rather had some more scenes showing the astronauts at work or something than random chatter and, at least what were at the time, spectacular eye candy. It’s like 2001 took all the worst aspects of contemporary films and modern blockbusters and just made a giant masturbatory film praising his own genius.
And I even watched it twice because I hated it so much the first time I thought I HAD to have missed something since so many people seem to profess that they love the film and it’s so deep. My conclusion is that people thought it was deep because they didn’t get it so they assumed it was so genius it was over their heads, where people just didn’t get it because it was a boring nonsense film that utterly failed to convey any of the themes present in the source material without foreknowledge of what to look for. It’s like an artist splattering paint on a canvas, making up some abstract interpretation, and selling it for millions, primarily because of his name based on previous work. Color me thoroughly unimpressed.
Sorry, but it’s not at all like an abstract painting. It’s all right there for anyone to see. The ending is a bit surrealistic, but that’s not the same thing.
As did I. The special effects were spectacular for the time, and the curved screen made them dizzying.
2001 didn’t have any car chases, sex scenes, big explosions, and you had to actually think! No wonder some people found it boring. Some people.