Get Smart – Bring Back the 62-minute Movie!
June 27, 2008
I haven’t seen the new Get Smart movie yet (maybe I’m still smarting from The Nude Bomb back in ’80) but I was surprised to see that the film has a running time of 110 minutes. 110 minutes? For a comedy based on a 30-minute sitcom?
Granted, probably seven or eight of those minutes consist of those all-important credits – me, I always stick around to find out who drove the honeywagon, but still.
When I look at my own list of all-time favorite comedies, most run closer to half that running time. Consider these gems:
It’s a Gift (1932) – 73 minutes
Sons of the Desert (1933) – 68 minutes
Sherlock, Jr. (1924) – 44 minutes
Abbott & Costello meet Frankenstein (1948) – 83 minutes
Crazy House (1943) – 80 minutes
The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944) – 98 minutes
The Naked Gun (1988) – 85 minutes
Duck Soup (1933) – 68 minutes
The Bellboy (1960) – 72 minutes
Of course, this is not to say short = better; two favorite comedies, Billy Wilder’s Avanti! and Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World run well over two hours. Generally though, it’s pretty hard to sustain laughs for much more than 75 minutes in a feature comedy, and the old pros knew when to stop milking the laughs.
