2010

A fairly ill-advised sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010 follows Roy Scheider’s Heywood Floyd, the architect behind the first film’s doomed expedition, as he and several scientists embark on a journey to find out just what happened to the Discovery One. It’s a fairly promising setup that’s slowly-but-surely squandered by filmmaker Peter Hyams, as 2010, which progresses at an often unreasonably deliberate pace, rarely succeeds as either a follow-up to Stanley Kubrick’s landmark picture or as a stand-alone science-fiction thriller – with the movie’s hands-off atmosphere compounded by an often impenetrable screenplay that’s rife with padded-out, surprisingly uninvolving set-pieces. (Having said that, there are a few interludes that do manage to pack a suspenseful punch, with the most obvious example of this involving two crew members’ efforts at free-floating towards the Discovery One.) The resulting lack of momentum grows more and more problematic as the surprisingly thin story unfolds, and it’s clear, consequently, that Hyams’ ongoing endeavors at cultivating tension generally fall distressingly flat. This ultimately does ensure that the oddball, metaphysical happenings within the picture’s second half are hardly as meaningful as scripter Hyams has intended, with the filmmaker’s attempts to clarify certain happenings within 2001: A Space Odyssey faring just as poorly as one might’ve feared (ie Hyams just complicates what was a relatively straight-forward narrative) – which ultimately confirms 2010‘s place as a fairly disappointing (and thoroughly needless) sequel.

** out of ****