I have had it. Movies take too long. All things in this life have a natural run time. It is wrong for movie makers to feel that they have the right to abuse their audience. Perhaps a new rating system is in order to let studios know just how much pain they cause the movie going public. At the very least I am going to engage in my own policy.
A movie is meant to last 90 minutes. Golf lasts 18 holes. Baseball is 9 innings. Sex takes 14.2 seconds (if you think about baseball or golf, less otherwise). All of these limits have been proven over time. We (as a people) have discovered that the limit to sit quietly in a darkened theater is 90 minutes. Even airlines are now capped by federal law at 180 minutes (3 hours for readers in southern Ohio).
It should be considered abuse for a movie to charge you $10 and then hold you hostage for more than 100 minutes. Especially when the movie is filled with the long, boring, self indulgent scenes of Daniel Day Lewis agonizing over his oil riches or Sean Penn agonizing over the plight of the children in Bagdad. Literally this kind of non-story telling crap can expand 90 minutes of content to two and a half hours. This is abuse!
I would like the MPAA to issue new rating level beyond G, PG, PG-13, R, and X. I propose TDL (Too Damn Long) for any movie with a runtime longer than 100 minutes. The theatres could enforce a ‘use the restroom now’ rule prior to customers entering the theatre. Theatre’s could re-instate intermission at the 60 and or 90 minute mark and force every patron to use the restroom and walk by the concession stand at that time.
Seriously, I will not be held prisoner in a movie theatre by James Cameron, George Lucas, or even (gasp!) Peter Jackson. I have committed no crime. I won’t even watch bootlegged copies of films. Yet these film makers feel compelled to test my bladder limits with every new film. I will not tolerate this abuse of my goodwill, time, and money.
