One of the best movies ever made, on one of the biggest screens in New York. What could be better?

It’s taken me many years and many view­ings to real­ize that the movie is actu­ally very, very funny. Per­haps this shouldn’t be sur­pris­ing, com­ing right on the heels Dr. Strangelove, but the som­bre seri­ous air about the film dis­guised some of the com­edy to my young mind watch­ing the movie every year uncut on a Philadel­phia VHF chan­nel. Just a few of the many huge “jokes” packed into the film: the entire human con­di­tion con­densed as chimp pan­tomime, fan­tas­tic visions of the future punc­tured by hilar­i­ously closed-minded humans more inter­ested in sand­wiches, and the most naked human emo­tions shown on screen com­ing from apes and com­put­ers as opposed to sup­pos­edly evolved humans.

2001 On the web: Kubrick 2001 presents an elab­o­rate, though some­times silly, ani­mated expli­ca­tion. Then there’s The Under­view, in valiant oppo­si­tion to the schem­ing dedamned’s auto­guard, help­fully includ­ing the com­plete Zero Grav­ity Toi­let instruc­tions.

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