Dave, my mind is going... I can feel it.

Well it has finally happened. I was actually hoping it would happen, and with only a handful of movies left to go, I thought it may not happen, but it has.

This weeks movie is 2001: A Space Odyssey. Made in 1968, directed and produced by Stanley Kubrick and winning an Oscar for best effects in 1969.

So what am I so excited about? This is the first movie I have reviewed that I am going to give a big fat zero. A duck egg, donut, nada, zilch, zip, nothing, nought. It is hands down one of the worst movies I have ever seen. After 10 minutes I thought I should turn it off and give it a score of one. I give it a zero because I really wish I had done just that. The first 5 minutes of the movie is just a black screen, the next 25 minutes is monkeys running around making monkey noises. Then we have 20 minutes of watching space ships. Then 20 minutes of normal movie happen, then it just gets weirder and weirder. I actually left the movie playing and went off and did other things several times, including writing this review. I felt like I needed to be on drugs to watch it but I wasn't sure which one I needed. Probably the same one Stanley Kubrick was on when he made this rubbish. The movie itself could be described in terms of being a drug. The first 3rd was a sedative which made me sleepy, the 2nd 3rd was valium and the last 3rd was LSD or acid. I had no idea what was going on.

The story is basically in real time, so when they are preparing to get into the pod to go out into space, we follow them down the hallway, down the stairs, get into the pod, buckle up, start the incredibly slow pod launching mechanism and then drift painfully slowly into space. This all takes 25 minutes. That is no joke. You think to your self -WHY?

Never at any stage, while watching this movie, did I think -

• this is a good movie
• I can't wait to see what happens next
• this story is building to something big

Ok, I will now look at the positives. The effects for the time (1968) are actually quite awesome. The space scenes, spacecraft and interiors would actually still hold up today in a movie. The screens and monitors in the movie would actually have been more advanced than they really were in the year 2001. So Stan had excellent foresight. Unfortunately those positives aren't even a spit in the ocean compared to the negatives.

The Rating -

2001: A Space Odyssey - zero gravity