What a lot of the other reviewers here have said about this movie is at least partially true; this is good old-fashioned morality play sci-fi like you used to see back in the good old days, with classy production values and garden-variety dramatic acting in an essentially traditional mold.
What they are not telling you is that it has plot holes so big the plot itself as a whole could be regarded as a plot hole. I don't know that it would be anything more than gratuitous to describe them in detail here, but suffice to say that one monumental improbability is piled on after the next to where your "willing suspension of disbelief" (google that, sometime) is easily challenged past the breaking point before you are much more than maybe halfway through the picture. Along with transparent sponging off 2001, A SPACE ODYSSEY and you will easily find yourself wondering midway through, where are they going with this, and can they even get there? The answer, of course, is not for this viewer, at least.
Much of this could have been avoided by a fairly minor amount of script doctoring, but that doesn't seem to have occurred to the decision-makers behind this effort (or lack thereof). Even the title itself seems rather lame in indicating practically nothing about the story (or was there some deep symbolism intended here that is in fact too deep for any ordinary viewer to solve its riddle?) And if that's not enough, even the dramatics are lacking in that the "aha!" plot-transition moment this movie's plot needs isn't "aha!" enough to satisfy either. Moreover, the main character himself is portrayed in classic modern-day "realistic" (almost documentary) style, entirely lacking in the kind of almost sugar-coated romanticizing that was normal before the 1960's anti-traditional movement declared such treatments "uncool" and contrived, with the result that he is not sympathetic enough to evoke the kind of gut-crunching emotional reaction the movie needs to succeed in what it needs to do (to say nothing of getting the audience past the plot holes.) An average sci-fi enthusiast in junior high school writing for 8th grade English class in 1965 would have probably put more into it (to say nothing of what a few violins in the right places would have accomplished in even an Irwin-Allen-style treatment). In fact, there was even an episode of Star Trek ENTERPRISE which actually dealt with the theme central to this movie with vastly better emotional content and for emotional payoff it was truly memorable, unlike this movie.
Given all this, I have to doubt I'll ever be watching this again.
What they are not telling you is that it has plot holes so big the plot itself as a whole could be regarded as a plot hole. I don't know that it would be anything more than gratuitous to describe them in detail here, but suffice to say that one monumental improbability is piled on after the next to where your "willing suspension of disbelief" (google that, sometime) is easily challenged past the breaking point before you are much more than maybe halfway through the picture. Along with transparent sponging off 2001, A SPACE ODYSSEY and you will easily find yourself wondering midway through, where are they going with this, and can they even get there? The answer, of course, is not for this viewer, at least.
Much of this could have been avoided by a fairly minor amount of script doctoring, but that doesn't seem to have occurred to the decision-makers behind this effort (or lack thereof). Even the title itself seems rather lame in indicating practically nothing about the story (or was there some deep symbolism intended here that is in fact too deep for any ordinary viewer to solve its riddle?) And if that's not enough, even the dramatics are lacking in that the "aha!" plot-transition moment this movie's plot needs isn't "aha!" enough to satisfy either. Moreover, the main character himself is portrayed in classic modern-day "realistic" (almost documentary) style, entirely lacking in the kind of almost sugar-coated romanticizing that was normal before the 1960's anti-traditional movement declared such treatments "uncool" and contrived, with the result that he is not sympathetic enough to evoke the kind of gut-crunching emotional reaction the movie needs to succeed in what it needs to do (to say nothing of getting the audience past the plot holes.) An average sci-fi enthusiast in junior high school writing for 8th grade English class in 1965 would have probably put more into it (to say nothing of what a few violins in the right places would have accomplished in even an Irwin-Allen-style treatment). In fact, there was even an episode of Star Trek ENTERPRISE which actually dealt with the theme central to this movie with vastly better emotional content and for emotional payoff it was truly memorable, unlike this movie.
Given all this, I have to doubt I'll ever be watching this again.