Another reviewer below ( http://imdb.com/CommentsShow?62622-541 ) asked this very question as well. I've written an earlier review ( http://imdb.com/CommentsShow?62622-432 ) hailing it as a Masterpiece, though now I'm considering whether it's even greater than that. I look at the "top 100 lists" here and elsewhere, and when you consider such films as _The Godfather_, _Citizen Kane_, _Schindler's List_ and a very, very short list of others (after you get past about 6 or 7 films, the next on the list after those just don't stack up to _2001_), _2001_ may or may not stand right alongside them or surpass them as far as cinematic perfection goes, but it is, at the very least, in extremely close proximity.
As for all the negative reviews of the film, I think a chief problem many have with this film is that it doesn't present itself as a "normal" film; if what you want is a film that plays like other great ones, you're going to be sorely disappointed. As anyone who watched it (love it or hate it) knows, it doesn't rely on explicit narrative nearly as much as in just about any other great film you care to name. But it sets a standard for monumental filmmaking. For many of us lovers of cinema, Stanley Kubrick's epic is a blessing: it showed to the world and to the filmmaking industry that "weird," "avant-garde" filmmaking can be great. Yeah, it took a guy with a big name and a big-studio super-budget to make it happen on American screens, but it helped to breathe new life into the cinema and taught the studios not to stifle greatness just because it may be "boring" or "weird."
Again, we lovers of film all owe Stanley a huge debt.
As for all the negative reviews of the film, I think a chief problem many have with this film is that it doesn't present itself as a "normal" film; if what you want is a film that plays like other great ones, you're going to be sorely disappointed. As anyone who watched it (love it or hate it) knows, it doesn't rely on explicit narrative nearly as much as in just about any other great film you care to name. But it sets a standard for monumental filmmaking. For many of us lovers of cinema, Stanley Kubrick's epic is a blessing: it showed to the world and to the filmmaking industry that "weird," "avant-garde" filmmaking can be great. Yeah, it took a guy with a big name and a big-studio super-budget to make it happen on American screens, but it helped to breathe new life into the cinema and taught the studios not to stifle greatness just because it may be "boring" or "weird."
Again, we lovers of film all owe Stanley a huge debt.