Yes, drugs help. I kept rewinding the long montages to go over them again and again, so I probably spent about 3.5 hours on this movie.

But WOW, I had no idea just how creepy the HAL-9000 would come across. Definitely a great horror story in the middle third.

As for the last third, well, seeing this after cutting your teeth on Lynch films makes it less absurd. But only a little.