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What’s the ideal length of time for a movie?

Suffice to say, we here at Mutant Reviewers spend a lot of time watching movies. It kind of comes with the territory (not to mention the never-ending conveyor belt of the posting schedule). When you do this for a while, the length of the next movie to be reviewed becomes increasingly important and you become more sensitive to the runtime.

So what’s the ideal length of time for a movie? After reviewing literally thousands of films here, I can definitely say — for me — the answer is “between 90 and 110 minutes.” Basically, anything shorter than two hours.

That seems to fly in the face of Hollywood’s big-budget films these days. Two-and-a-half to three-hour films are pretty commonplace when the spectacle, name brand recognition, and CGI budget is particularly high.

For fun, I ran down the 10 highest-grossing movies of 2023 and re-ordered them in terms of length:

  1. Oppenheimer (180 min)
  2. The Wandering Earth 2 (173 min)
  3. Full River Red (159 min)
  4. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 (150 min)
  5. Fast X (141 min)
  6. Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse (140 min)
  7. The Little Mermaid (135 min)
  8. Wonka (116 min)
  9. Barbie (114 min)
  10. Super Mario Bros. Movie (92 min)

Just from that list, we can see that only three of the 10 movies clocked in at under two hours. Guardians 3 is a prime example of how Marvel movies frequently bloat their runtimes far beyond what is necessary (The Avengers: Endgame is 181 minutes as the series’ longest to date, with The Incredible Hulk at 112 minutes as the series’ shortest).

For fun, let’s compare that list with the top-grossing movies from 40 years ago in 1983;

  1. Return of the Jedi (132 minutes)
  2. Terms of Endearment (132 minutes)
  3. Octopussy (131 minutes)
  4. Sudden Impact (117 minutes)
  5. Trading Places (116 minutes)
  6. WarGames (114 minutes)
  7. Risky Business (99 minutes)
  8. Flashdance (97 minutes)
  9. Staying Alive (96 minutes)
  10. Mr. Mom (91 minutes)

This is all an extremely small data set but it illustrates how short some very popular movies used to be — and how even the really big spectacles weren’t that far over two hours.

Don’t forget that you’ve got to add up to another 30 minutes on top of that if you go to the movie theater to see it, because you have ads, trailers, and “PLEASE for the LOVE of Peter Popcorn, turn OFF your phones!” PSAs.

Sometimes a movie does need more than two hours to properly tell a story, but I’d argue that this should be a rare exception rather than the standard. So many great films manage to crank out a tight, cohesive, involving story in under two hours. Back in the ’90s, movies topping 2.5+ hours were few and very far between.

Maybe this is simply personal preference, but a good 90-minute film usually hits that sweet spot for me, especially when it’s an indie, comedy, romance, or B-movie. I’ve put off reviewing movies for the sole reason that I’d have to set aside almost three hours to see them — and I’d rather watch two shorter films in that time unless it’s the Best Movie Ever.

Hint: It’s probably not.

A time constraint on a movie can actually benefit it greatly by encouraging editors/directors to trim the fat and eliminate self-indulgent, non-essential scenes. It makes me think of when Arrested Development came back on Netflix with episodes that sometimes ran as long as 40 minutes — and you felt that in a way you never did with the old 21-minute tales. The jokes were stretched out, the plots got too drawn out and convoluted, and watching them felt like a marathon rather than a “ooh just one more before bed!” temptation.

This may even get me side-eyes from geek circles, but I even prefer the normal theatrical versions of Lord of the Rings to the extended editions. Extra stuff is nice — especially when it’s optional — but often scenes end up on the cutting room floor for a reason.

I also think that a shorter runtime works to your advantage whether it ends up being a great movie or a terrible one. If it’s awful, at least you know you won’t have to sit through much more of it (if you’re not turning it off for whatever reason). If it’s incredible, then it doesn’t overstay its welcome and makes you excited to watch it again.

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