why are movies so long these days?

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there's 14 movies playing in State College this weekend and the average length is one hour and fifty five minutes. Why are movies like Anger Management and Bulletproof Monk two hours long? What ever happened to making this trash go fast? Is their some practical, economic reason Hollywood is making longer movies or are things just getting pointlessly bloated?

Malibu's Most Wanted, which the newspaper describes as "the story of Brad Gluckman, a wannabe rap star from Malibu who acts and talks like he's from the 'hood'" is an hour forty. Weren't SNL movies sometimes 80+ minutes long? Why does The Last Wigga want to push for another twenty minutes of my time?

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Friday, 25 April 2003 23:32 (twenty-two years ago)

my theory: overly elaborate plots. people want to feel like they got their money's worth so lots of "stuff" has to happen.

― ryan, Friday, 25 April 2003 23:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Countered by shorter movies so theaters can have more showings during the day.

― Chris Barrus (Chris Barrus), Saturday, 26 April 2003 00:14 (twenty-two years ago)

to thread:

"Magnolia".

― Scott Kos (Scott Kos), Saturday, 26 April 2003 00:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Agreed, no comedy should be more than 90 minutes.

― David Beckhouse (David Beckhouse), Saturday, 26 April 2003 00:26 (twenty-two years ago)

This puzzles me a little, to be sure. Was a period a few years back when I was worried movies were going to shrink into nothingness--like Men in Black was 80 minutes long or something. But it seems to have gone into reverse, for not easily explainable (economic or otherwise reasons).

I had to see Malibu's Most Wanted, and trust me, that movie could have been 90 minutes shorter.

As a sidenote, I just remembered this evening, after a couple of days of blocking the movie out completely, that there was one funny scene. That's when the main character is 13 and the theme of his bar mitzvah is "O.P.P."

― slutsky (slutsky), Saturday, 26 April 2003 04:39 (twenty-two years ago)

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