I don’t mind long movies when I don’t notice they’re long movies. Most recently, “Oppenheimer” (running time 180 minutes, 3 hours) was a long film that was properly lengthy for the weighty detail rich story being told. “The Sound of Music” (running time 174 minutes, nearly 3 hours) moves right along with no sawdust or filler. High on a hill is a lonely goat-a . . .

But when the movie is obviously dragged out I get annoyed. When a filmmaker is so self-indulgent in the edit I get flustered. Why is my time being wasted? I have value! “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” clocks in at a ludicrous 201 minutes (3 hours and 21 minutes) with so much puffed up stuffing at the end and the end and the end. Randal Graves in “Clerks 2” (running time 97 minutes) sums it up on spot:

“If Peter Jackson really wanted to blow me away with those Rings movies, he would’ve ended the third movie on the logical closure point, NOT the 25 endings that followed!”

Randal Graves, clerks 2

Arguments are made that are I suppose reasonable excuses for “LOTR:ROTK.” The movies were made for the Dungeons & Dragons denizens who haven’t much better to do with their time anyway. If not watching hours of hobbits and orcs and talking trees they’d just be rolling 20 sided dice and feeding their pet tarantula. But these excuses don’t transfer to the all time worst offender of movies approaching infinity for no good reason:

“Titanic” (running time 195 minutes, 3 hours and 15 minutes).

For illustrative comparison, the actual ship took less time to hit the iceberg and sink all the way to the bottom of the Atlantic, 12,500 feet below the surface of the waves. 2 hours and 40 minutes from towering iceberg to ocean floor mud.

The thing about “Titanic” is it’s a super lengthy, high budget, SFX heavy chick flick. It’s not a dude movie by design. Dudes only saw the movie because near certainly romantic rubbings occurred later by attending the viewing with their best gal. If not for the lure of fleshy l’amour after the closing credits, dudes gave “Titanic” a pass. As a single dude, why waste 3 hours and 15 minutes on wooden acting from dimensionless trope characters in a tedious linear plot? That tarantula isn’t going to feed itself.

I knew how long “Titanic” was going in. The movie was and still is infamous for the running time. Stipulated, I’m irked by overly long movies. So what got me to theater beyond high T levels and a way cute girlfriend? Spoiler alert, there was the tease of historic maritime catastrophe at the end of the movie, filmed by the cinematic genius behind “Terminator 2” (running time 137 minutes) and “Aliens” (also 137 minutes). This was the concession for our presence. So we dudes had that going for us. We just had to wait out the chick flick part . . . the chick flick part just never ended. The viscous slow motion budding romance between Twigboy and Crumpetgirl wouldn’t end. One hour. Two hours. It. Never. Ended. For the sake of every burnt out star in the heavens above! Why?

I got so frustrated in the theater, so riled by impatience, I opined aloud, “C’mon, sink the damn ship already!”

Fellow men in the theater applauded my outburst.

Here’s the point. If you’re going to make a three hour movie you better hide it’s a three hour movie by making a film so enthralling I don’t notice the three hours. It’s like hiding your pudge in a Tinder photo. Hold tight. Let me gather words. Right. I don’t know how to flesh out this analogy without coming off any more toxic masculine than I already am, so I’ll just say hiding Tinder photo pudge and hiding three hour movie run time are figuratively equivalent. How so? I need to be fully distracted from the hefty magnitude and fully engaged in the promise of satisfying outcome in order for me to want to remain there and have fun remaining.

Two hours, tops. That’s a good running time for a movie. Two hours.