Best Presentation to Date

This release is definitely better than the original MGM dvd. The Remastered Picture and audio is superior in every respect and this includes the old director approved Criterion Collection laserdisc.
For those disappointed with the lack of extras, Warner Home Video is planning an all new special edition sometime later this year with lots of extras. This and A Clockwork Orange and perhaps others were announced for special edition treatment when WHV released their 2006 dvd relase schedule. Finally we'll get the edition we're all waiting for.

An honest Review-with details...

First of all as a movie to entertain and please...this movie fails completely and uterly.
But as a work of art showcasing ones ideas of space travel and passion for psychadelic colours and classical music it gets and A+.

Conclusion:Do not attempt to watch this movie unless it's for a psychology class, an art class or just wanna torture yourself for no aparent reason.Let me be the first to say that as a science fiction fan -->This movie is pointless, it has no conclusion nor a guideline to give the viewer even the slightest idea as to where it's heading.If you must watch it make sure you have that fast forward button working coz it's gonna be a long watch.

Look at the far future with optimism.

This review contains possibly a spoiler. I explain what happens at the end of the film. I do this because the end is confusing if you don't know something about the ideas of Arthur C.Clarke, an English scientist and SF writer who wrote the script for this movie along with Stanley Kubrick.

The basic idea of the film is that the 'Homo Sapiens' evolved from the apes (Darwin) and the 'Homo Cosmos' will in time evolve from the 'Homo Sapiens'(A.C.Clarke). The 'Homo Cosmos' will be a human creature that is able to live in outer space like we are able to live on Earth. Space will be his natural environment.

Arthur C.Clarke writes about this idea ( and many other scientific speculations ) in his book 'Profiles of the Future', first published in 1962 - he calls it 'An inquiry into the limits of the possible' - and revised in 1999 for millennial edition published by Indigo.

Before I carry on I have to say that the characters in this film are very cold and distant (all of them with perhaps the exception of the six year old daughter of one of the scientists.)They are polite but they could be mindless robots. I don't know if this was on purpose or that the scriptwriters didn't care about human psychology.

The movie has four parts.
First is the long winded part where you can witness the daily life of large apes. I presume that stunt men crawled almost literally in the skin of those apes. The special make-up must have cost a fortune. I give the film 4 stars because this first part is extremely slow-paced and is of very little importance for the rest of the film.
You start wondering if your watching the wrong movie but at the end of that first part, you understand that the basic idea was that the apes are climbing up the ladder of evolution by using large bones as a tool or a weapon.

In the second part some scientists travel to the moon (there are already several colonies on the moon), to visit a mysterious artifact dug up in the vicinity of one of the colonies. We are told that the artifact points toward Jupiter where possibly another artifact can be found, floating like a satellite around the giant planet.

The third part is the mission to Jupiter. Something happens and the only survivor of the mission takes one of the space-capsules. He uses the gravity of Jupiter to gain speed and he makes a discovery voyage beyond Jupiter. The enormous speed he has is one of the most impressive scenes of the film.

In the fourth and last part of the movie, we witness the decay of the Homo Sapiens and we look at the foetus of the Homo Cosmos, floating in outer space.

A professional reviewer called The Space Odyssey a movie with a pessimistic vision. He apparently didn't read 'Profiles of the Future' because if there is one SF movie that is optimistic and welcomes the future with open arms (so to speak) it's The Space Odyssey.
After all, a whole new kind of humans with different and powerful possibilities is about to be born.