I was reading an article in the paper the other day about how so many movies lately have longer-than-usual running times. They mentioned that even comedies are trending this way, with “This Is 40” having a running time of 134 minutes (causing some people to joke that the title should be “This Is 40 Minutes Too Long”).
It got me to wondering what is the longest film that is considered a comedy? I remember back in the VHS days renting a copy of “The Blues Brothers” that was too long for a single cassette, so I figured it was well over two hours. I looked it up on IMDB and they say the running time is 133 minutes, so it is a minute shorter than “This Is 40”. Are there any comedies in the 2:30 to 3:00 hour range?
The Cure for Insomnia is one of the longest movies ever made. And I’ve seen at least one description of it as a “comedy”. But I don’t think it really qualifies - it consists of L.D. Groban reading his poem “A Cure for Insomnia”. The poem is 4080 pages long and the movie runs for 5220 minutes (87 hours). So it would have to be a really funny poem.
Probably the longest movie which would generally be considered a comedy is the 1988 British production of Little Dorrit. It ran for 357 minutes and was usually shown in two parts.