This is starting to remind me of how I felt when I burned-out in college as an English Writing major (got the degree eventually) and was sick of figuratively tearing books apart via analysis. I wanted to read for the enjoyment of reading and talk about the aspects I enjoyed talking about, not spend hours digging through the work and dissecting it looking for deeper meaning which may or may not have been the creators' intent.
Maybe some people feel that being able to analyze a work in-depth means they are better able to appreciate it than someone who doesn't perform that level of criticism, but does that really matter so long as the less-analytical person is still appreciating the film?
I think you make a perfectly valid point. Of course there's nothing wrong with simply enjoying a book or film, more or less putting your brain into cruise control, and just accepting the work for its entertainment value. And absolutely, many great books and movies can be enjoyed even on the surface level of entertainment. As a college professor myself, I can tell you that, absolutely, there are times when I just want to read the damn book and NOT think about the subtle messages and images and social contexts of the work. A movie like, say, Minority Report, works exceptionally well as an action/mystery/sci-fi/thriller, and even if you don't spend a great deal of time thinking about it, you can still love it. The same goes for most latter-day Spielberg movies (Saving Private Ryan and Munich, especially), as well as Inception, Serious Man, and tons of others. On the other hand, if you DO spend a week afterwards trying to deal, intellectually, with the philosophical implications of these films, or you watch or rewatch them with your brain very much on active, you can enjoy them on a completely different level.
Some movies, though, and some books, simply DON'T WORK on that surface-level of entertainment. That doesn't make them a better or worse movie or book, just a very different one. They simply don't rely on narrative, or traditional notions of character or suspense, and unless you watch them with that active intellectual approach, they may offer you very little. 2001 is one of those movies. All of Samuel Beckett's books and plays also fall into that category. They just don't work as entertaining storytelling for anyone who isn't meeting them half-way, but the reason they are magnificent is because they are intensely compelling, enthralling, and entertaining, as long as you watch/read them very actively and intellectually. You can say books or movies "shouldn't" require a different approach than any other movie or book, but "should" has nothing to do with it - some works simply DO.
