10 Classic Movies You Didn't Know Were Slammed By Critics

4. 2001: A Space Odyssey

One of the beautiful things about another Stanley Kubrick masterpiece to have found itself on the receiving end of a scathing review is its ambiguity - as a master of "pure cinema", Kubrick let's the imagery in 2001: A Space Odyssey speak for itself, leaving the audience to infer their own sense of meaning. Clearly not everyone is a fan of this enigmatic approach, including John Simon of The New Leader, who wrote, "The slab is never explained, leaving 2001, for all its lively visual and mechanical spectacle, a kind of space-Spartacus and, more pretentious still, a shaggy God story." It's certainly a far more cerebral, less fun film than Star Wars and can be something of an acquired taste, although the Washington Post's assessment when revisited in 2001 really gives it the boot, describing it as "less a visionary masterpiece than a crackpot Looney Tune, pretentious, abysmally slow, amateurishly acted and, above all, wrong." Ouch.