2010

Hyams has not come up with a climax to match Kubrick's rush through the star-gate; but this is still space fiction of a superior kind, making the Star Trek movies look puny by comparison. Read full review

2010 is an essential text of the late Cold War. Read full review

You have to make some distinctions in your mind. In one category, "2001: A Space Odyssey" remains inviolate, one of the handful of true film masterpieces. In a more temporal sphere, "2010" qualifies as superior entertainment, a movie more at home with technique than poetry, with character than with mystery, a movie that explains too much and leaves too little to our sense of wonderment, but a good movie all the same. Read full review

Almost paradoxically, 2010 may be unnecessary, but it is nevertheless a worthwhile effort. Read full review

The major difference between films is "2010's" greater emphasis on people. The performances are all excellent, but Helen Mirren is utterly convincing as the formidable commander of the Leonov. Roy Scheider costars as the former head of the Space Agency, with John Lithgow as the enginer of Discovery and Bob Balaban as the father of H.A.L. [7 Dec 1984, p.39]

A perfectly adequate though not really comparable - sequel to Stanley Kubrick's witty, mind- bending science-fiction classic, ''2001: A Space Odyssey.' Read full review

Not a masterpiece, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's pleasing to see a sequel strive so hard to reach the same heights. That it fails is through no fault of its own - the original simply raised the bar too high. Read full review

As a standard science-fiction film, 2010 is fine. It has all the right plot elements, dramatic tension, and eye-popping special effects. The performances are uniformly good, the space-adventure scenes are excitingly handled, and the reappearance of HAL 9000 and Dullea is downright eerie. Yet it's hard to get over the fact that the purpose of this film is to tear down all the awe-inspiring effects of 2001. The sequel simply fails to fascinate and awe us like the original did. Read full review

Hyams's attempt at a cosmic conclusion is about as earth shattering as yesterday's weather report. [10 Dec 1984, p.94]

In Peter Hyams’ hands [working from a novel by Arthur C. Clarke], the HAL mystery is the most satisfying substance of the film and handled the best. Unfortunately, it lies amid a hodge-podge of bits and pieces. Read full review

Flash: There is intelligent life in outer space. More, anyway, than in this amiable footnote of a movie. Read full review

The best-developed theme in 2010, in fact, is anti-climax. Many scenes have one, the entire movie seems to be one. And we still don't know what the deal is with that monolith. [7 Dec 1984, p.D1]

Sadly, 2010 is not going to make it any easier for the uninitiated to grasp the reasons its predecessor thrilled a generation: the only people 2010 is likely to thrill are the agents of the actors in the cast. [7 Dec 1984]

The bucketloads of sanctimonious message mongering ladled on by director Peter Hyams still can't disguise the sheerly mercenary basis of this 1986 project, a wholly uncalled-for sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 2001. Read full review

2010 is a one-man tour de fizzle, a yawnfest so plodding it seems to have been made by the famous monolith itself. [7 Dec 1984, p.D1]