You have to have a pretty good reason to make a movie that exceeds three hours in length, since that’s a considerable amount of time to expect a viewer to devote to a single movie. Sure, an intermission might make such an endeavor easier, but an intermission does also add further time to the whole experience, and what if the first half is not very good, and therefore tempts you to leave before the post-intermission stuff starts?
Below are movies that might be as long as Seven Samurai, Lawrence of Arabia, and The Godfather Part II, but they’re far from those kinds of classics quality-wise. Certain films here have redeeming qualities, be they some good performances or impressive visuals, but with the movies below, they’re all challenging to actually get through, and generally feel even longer than their already long runtimes.
8
‘Ryan’s Daughter’ (1970)
David Lean knew how to make an epic, for the most part, since he was behind Lawrence of Arabia, The Bridge on the River Kwai, and Doctor Zhivago, all of them classics, to some extent. But then there’s also Ryan’s Daughter, which is a technically impressive film for sure, looking and feeling like those better Lean-directed epics, but it’s narratively pretty plodding and tedious.
It’s set in a similar time period to both Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, and, like the latter, is both a period drama and something of a romance film, but it’s just boring. The cinematography, cast, and music can only take Ryan’s Daughter so far. It’s easy to appreciate some of those technical elements, and in most regards, Ryan’s Daughter is well-made, though the boredom is overwhelming at a point, and the runtime of 206 minutes feels truly crushing. It does not pass by the way the similarly long Lawrence of Arabia does, by any means.
7
‘Raintree County’ (1957)
Raintree County feels like it never ends, though looking up the runtime online, or glancing at the back of the DVD cover, or whatever you want, will make plain that it’s apparently not genuinely never-ending, clocking in at 188 minutes. How it feels, though… man. It’s a clunky melodrama that plays out around the time of the Civil War, so it’s a bit like a worse Gone with the Wind.
There’s a good reason why this film has basically been forgotten, despite it having a fairly strong cast made up of actors who’ve all been in much better films.
Now, that movie has its problems, some of them even pacing-related, but it’s not bad enough to be considered here; it gets a pass. But no mercy is being granted to Raintree County, and there’s a good reason why this film has basically been forgotten, despite it having a fairly strong cast made up of actors who’ve all been in much better films, including Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, Eva Marie Saint, and Lee Marvin.
6
‘Around the World in 80 Days’ (1956)
It would’ve been nice if Around the World in 80 Days had run for a snappy 80-ish minutes in total, but instead, it’s a considerable 182 minutes in duration. The attempt here seemed to be showing as much of the world as possible within a single film, since the plot does revolve around getting around the world in 80 days or less, but it feels like a bit much, at a certain point.
Maybe close to seven decades ago, seeing an adventure this sprawling was more of an exciting experience, enough so that Around the World in 80 Days actually won the Oscar for Best Picture. Now, though, it’s not got much to offer, and that’s certainly/thankfully not something that can be said about all Best Picture winners from the 1950s (some, like On the Waterfront and Ben-Hur, hold up pretty damn well).
5
‘Wyatt Earp’ (1994)
In 1993, Tombstone was released, and while it’s a pretty grand Western, it’s not an epic in the truest of senses, since its runtime isn’t too big. But it didn’t need to be, and Tombstone feels as big as the story of Wyatt Earp and the gunfight at the O.K. Corral needed to be. Then, in 1994, there was another movie about the same kind of thing, and it was a slog.
That movie was Wyatt Earp, and it was about an hour longer than Tombstone while feeling more like two hours longer. It drones on and on, and since it came out second, it really just makes you wish you were rewatching Tombstone instead. Sorry, Kevin Costner. He tries, in the title role, and there are some sequences in the film that aren’t bad, and a supporting cast that includes the likes of Gene Hackman, Michael Madsen, Bill Pullman, and Isabella Rossellini sure ain’t worthless or anything, but neither do those things save Wyatt Earp, or make it worth watching, really.
4
‘Exodus’ (1960)
Exodus was a book published in 1958, and it didn’t take very long at all for a film adaptation to be developed and released, ultimately just two years later, in 1960. The book was pretty long, and so maybe it’s not surprising that the movie was also lengthy, clocking in at almost 3.5 hours and taking place in the late 1940s, with the narrative being about the founding of the State of Israel not long after the end of World War II.
The political content of the movie is not being judged here, because Exodus is about certain things that remain relevant, and it’s out of the bounds of an entertainment writer to comment on that with just a paragraph or two. Why Exodus is here is because it’s boring. You might agree with the stance the movie has on the conflict it explores, or you might disagree, but then people on both sides might be united by the fact that they find Exodus dull. It’s just sluggish, and there’s a sense of relief that sets in once it finally ends.
3
‘The Great Ziegfeld’ (1936)
If you thought Oscar bait was a relatively recent phenomenon, or at least something that’s only been around for the past few decades, then maybe acquaint yourself with The Great Ziegfeld, which is like proto-Oscar bait, having been made almost 90 years ago, at the time of writing. It also plays out slowly enough that watching it makes you feel like 90 years have gone by, wasted on trying to slog your way through the film in question.
No, in reality, it’s 185 minutes long, but even if you tend to like movies that are this old, you’ll probably find it a tough sit. In any event, though, it did prove successful at the time of its release, winning Best Picture at the Oscars and “enduring” as one of the lesser films to win that award. If you really want to find out about the life and times of Florenz Ziegfeld, just read about him – or find anything else somewhat related to watch – for three hours instead of enduring The Great Ziegfeld.
2
‘The Alamo’ (1960)
While not all movies starring John Wayne are great, plenty are, though he wasn’t nearly as skilled behind the camera as he was in front of it. The Alamo shows this pretty blatantly, as it’s one of the only two films Wayne directed, and it is a mess of a movie. Other people involved with making this film, about the 1836 Battle of the Alamo, were doing their best, so you get some spectacle and technical elements here that work, but the overall finished product is messy.
It just doesn’t feel like a film where the director had the control that was needed, and when The Alamo is an epic and runs for more than three hours (well, its Roadshow release, at least), that becomes a particularly glaring problem. It’s arguably not a total disaster of a war movie, since it’s well shot, scored, and produced, in some regards, but it’s also very sloppy and noticeably poor on a directing front, which does go some way in kneecapping the parts that might otherwise work.
1
‘Camelot’ (1967)
Well, if you’re after an offbeat musical, you’ll probably find it with Camelot, but this might also be an instance of being careful about what you wish for. It’s accidentally almost as funny a movie about King Arthur as Monty Python and the Holy Grail, so lots of the hammy melodrama, overwrought romance, and goofy musical numbers here prove pretty amusing… but everything being entertaining? Oh, no. No, no, no. Not at all.
See, Camelot has the audacity to also be bang on 180 minutes long, and what an agonizingly long time 180 minutes can feel like, even if you’re spending some of those minutes laughing at – or absolutely confounded by – what you’re seeing. Richard Harris somehow gives a good performance, despite having such woeful material to work with, but otherwise, this is trashy camp at best and three hours of befuddlement, at worst. Enter at your own risk.
