20 Movies So Boring They Make Two Hours Feel Like Four

A movie does not need car chases, explosions, or a plot twist every seven minutes to hold an audience's attention. Some of the greatest films ever made take their time, relying on character, atmosphere, and quiet tension instead of spectacle. But there is a line between deliberate pacing and a movie that makes you wonder whether the clock has actually stopped.

Of course, "boring" is about as subjective as movie criticism gets. One person's meditative masterpiece is another person's accidental nap. That is especially true here, because a few of these movies were critically acclaimed, commercially successful, or both. Others were considerably less fortunate.

This list focuses on 20 movies that have drawn complaints about slow pacing, thin storytelling, excessive runtimes, or simply failing to make much of what looked like an interesting premise. Some deserve a second look. Others may have you checking the runtime before the opening credits are finished.

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Cast: Tamer Hassan, Ray Panthaki, Susan Lynch

Directed by Steve M Kelly, "City Rats" is a 2009 British ensemble drama about eight troubled Londoners whose lives intersect. It was released in the United Kingdom on April 24, 2009, and critics were not kind. Rotten Tomatoes lists a 0% Tomatometer score from 10 reviews and a 17% Popcornmeter score. Its fragmented structure, relentlessly bleak tone, and uneven storytelling make this one particularly easy to lose patience with.

Cast: Noah Ringer, Dev Patel, Nicola Peltz Beckham, Jackson Rathbone

M. Night Shyamalan's "The Last Airbender" turned the first season of the acclaimed animated series "Avatar: The Last Airbender" into a 103-minute live-action movie. The adaptation was hammered for its storytelling, performances, and strangely lifeless treatment of material that had worked so well on television. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 5% Tomatometer score and a 30% Popcornmeter score. A fantasy movie about people controlling the elements should not feel this flat, but here we are.

Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Sally Field, David Strathairn

"Lincoln" needs a fairly large asterisk on a list like this. Steven Spielberg's 2012 historical drama was a major critical success, earning 12 Academy Award nominations and winning two, including Best Actor for Daniel Day-Lewis. It also holds a 90% Tomatometer score. The 149-minute film, however, spends much of its time on negotiation, debate, and the legislative fight over the 13th Amendment. That is very much the point, but viewers expecting a sweeping Civil War epic may find the talk-heavy approach slow going.

Cast: Johnny Depp, Mia Wasikowska, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway

Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" certainly does not look boring. The 2010 fantasy is packed with elaborate costumes, strange creatures, enormous digital landscapes, and Johnny Depp doing very Johnny Depp things as the Mad Hatter. The story itself received a much more divided response. Rotten Tomatoes lists a 51% Tomatometer score and a 55% Popcornmeter score, with critics generally much warmer toward the visuals than the narrative. For all the movement on screen, the 109-minute movie can still feel oddly short on momentum.

Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Sarsgaard, Angela Bassett

"Green Lantern" had a huge comic-book mythology, a likable lead in Ryan Reynolds, and an entire universe of strange alien characters to work with. Somehow, the 2011 movie still wound up feeling surprisingly routine. Directed by Martin Campbell, it runs 114 minutes and sits at 25% on the Tomatometer and 45% on the Popcornmeter. Critics particularly took issue with the thin writing and overproduced presentation. There is plenty happening on screen, but not much of it builds the kind of excitement the premise seems to promise.

Cast: Eric Bana, Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliott

Ang Lee's 2003 "Hulk" is much more interested in Bruce Banner's psychology and family history than in simply watching a giant green man smash things. That was an ambitious choice, and critics were actually more receptive to the film than its reputation might suggest. It has a 63% Tomatometer score, compared with only 29% on the Popcornmeter. The bigger issue for impatient viewers is the 138-minute runtime and the long stretches of dialogue between its bursts of action. This is a superhero movie operating at the pace of a family drama.

Cast: Brad Pitt, Anthony Hopkins, Claire Forlani

"Meet Joe Black" is one of the more genuinely divisive movies on this list. Martin Brest's romantic fantasy runs about three hours and follows Death, played by Brad Pitt, as he experiences human life through a relationship with businessman William Parrish and his daughter. Critics were lukewarm, giving it a 48% Tomatometer score, while audiences have been much kinder at 81% on the Popcornmeter. If its dreamy, deliberate rhythm works for you, the length may not matter. If it does not, three hours is a very long time to find that out.

Cast: Jeff Daniels, Stephen Lang, Robert Duvall

Ronald F. Maxwell's "Gods and Generals" is a Civil War epic adapted from Jeff Shaara's novel and made as a prequel to Maxwell's 1993 film "Gettysburg." The theatrical version runs 219 minutes, or three hours and 39 minutes, while the director's cut stretches to 280 minutes. Much of that time is spent on speeches, military discussions, relationships, and the experiences of Confederate Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. Anyone looking primarily for battlefield action has to sit through a great deal of deliberate historical drama to get there.

Directed by: Robert Wise

Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley

The first "Star Trek" feature film brought the original television crew to the big screen under director Robert Wise. It also gave audiences 132 minutes of extremely deliberate science fiction. "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" spends long stretches admiring the Enterprise, exploring an enormous alien phenomenon, and letting its ideas breathe. Rotten Tomatoes currently has it at 51% with critics and 43% with audiences. There is thoughtful science fiction in here, but anyone expecting the faster pace of later "Star Trek" movies may feel every minute of the voyage.

Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Jennifer Ehle

"Fifty Shades of Grey" was unquestionably a commercial hit. Sam Taylor-Johnson's adaptation of E.L. James' novel grossed about $569.7 million worldwide against a reported $40 million production budget. Critical enthusiasm was another story. The film has a 25% Tomatometer score and a 41% Popcornmeter score. At 125 minutes, its restrained performances and repetitive relationship drama can make a movie sold largely on provocative subject matter feel surprisingly subdued.

Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester

Calling Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" simply a bad movie would be difficult to defend. The 1968 science-fiction landmark remains highly acclaimed, with a 90% Tomatometer score and an 88% Popcornmeter score. It is also unapologetically slow. Kubrick uses extended visual sequences, sparse dialogue, classical music, and long periods where viewers are expected to sit with an image rather than wait for the next plot beat. For some people that is hypnotic. For others, it is the cinematic equivalent of watching space paint dry.

Source: Courtesy of Sony Pictures Releasing

Cast: Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, Maggie Gyllenhaal

Roland Emmerich's "White House Down" was released on June 28, 2013, and runs 131 minutes. There is no shortage of action, explosions, or one-liners, so its problem is less about literal inactivity than familiarity. The movie has a 52% Tomatometer score and a 62% Popcornmeter score, with criticism frequently aimed at its reliance on familiar action-movie formulas. When you can see the next beat coming from a mile away, even a movie full of gunfire can start to feel long.

Cast: Storm Reid, Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling

Ava DuVernay's 2018 adaptation of Madeleine L'Engle's novel has no shortage of color, imaginative worlds, or recognizable stars. What it struggled to turn into consistent momentum was the story itself. The 109-minute Disney film holds a 43% Tomatometer score and a 26% Popcornmeter score. Its ambitious ideas and visual spectacle earned some praise, but the combination of exposition, abstract concepts, and uneven pacing left plenty of viewers less enchanted than the material suggests they should have been.

Cast: Casey Affleck, Matt Damon

Gus Van Sant's "Gerry" is a minimalist drama starring Matt Damon and Casey Affleck as two men, both named Gerry, who become lost in the desert. The film dates to 2002 and received its U.S. theatrical release in February 2003. It runs about 103 minutes, but its extremely long takes, limited dialogue, and intentionally repetitive journey can make it feel much longer. Interestingly, the response is almost perfectly divided: Rotten Tomatoes lists it at 61% with critics and 60% with audiences. That seems about right for a movie this committed to making viewers meet it on its own very slow terms.

Cast: Channing Tatum, Mila Kunis, Sean Bean

Lana and Lilly Wachowski certainly did not think small with "Jupiter Ascending." The 2015 space opera runs 127 minutes and throws royal bloodlines, genetic engineering, interplanetary dynasties, flying boots, and a mountain of mythology at the screen. The problem is that more stuff does not automatically mean more excitement. The film has a 28% Tomatometer score and a 38% Popcornmeter score. Its elaborate universe can become so buried under exposition that the story starts moving more slowly than all the visual chaos would suggest.

Cast: Warren Christie, Lloyd Owen, Ryan Robbins

"Apollo 18" is a 2011 found-footage horror movie built around a fictional secret lunar mission. NASA really did plan additional Apollo missions after Apollo 17, but Apollo 18 and Apollo 19 were canceled in 1970 and never flew. The movie turns that bit of history into a conspiracy-horror premise, but critics were not impressed with the result. Rotten Tomatoes lists a 24% Tomatometer score and a 23% Popcornmeter score. Even at just 86 minutes, its slow build and limited scares led to plenty of complaints that the trip to the Moon felt longer than advertised.

Cast: Gary Oldman, William Hurt, Matt LeBlanc

Stephen Hopkins' 1998 "Lost in Space" adapted the 1960s television series with a much bigger budget and considerably more visual effects. Calling it a simple box-office flop is not quite accurate: the movie grossed about $136.2 million worldwide against a reported $80 million production budget and opened at No. 1 in North America. Reception was the bigger problem. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 27% with critics and 25% with audiences. At roughly 130 minutes, the complicated time-travel plot and effects-heavy story eventually become more exhausting than exciting.

Cast: Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Gemma Arterton, Alexa Davalos

Louis Leterrier's "Clash of the Titans" is a 2010 remake of the 1981 fantasy adventure, with Sam Worthington taking over as Perseus. The movie is only 106 minutes long and has monsters, gods, sword fights, and a giant Kraken, which sounds like fairly strong insurance against boredom. The reception tells a different story. It holds a 27% Tomatometer score and a 40% Popcornmeter score, with critics finding the script and spectacle less thrilling than the material deserved. It is a lot of activity without nearly as much momentum.

Cast: Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, William Hurt

Ridley Scott's 2010 "Robin Hood" takes a more grounded, revisionist approach to the familiar outlaw legend. Russell Crowe plays Robin Longstride in a story that spends much of its 139-minute runtime explaining how he becomes the figure audiences already know. The film holds a 43% Tomatometer score and a 58% Popcornmeter score. There are strong performances and some large-scale action, but the lengthy origin story trades much of the usual swashbuckling energy for politics, warfare, and historical texture. Whether that sounds interesting or exhausting probably tells you how this one will go.

Cast: Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger

"Cold Mountain" is another movie where "boring" says more about a viewer's patience than the film's actual reception. Anthony Minghella's 2003 Civil War drama runs about two and a half hours and was both critically and commercially successful. It holds a 69% Tomatometer score and a 77% Popcornmeter score, grossed about $173 million worldwide, and earned Renée Zellweger the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Its pace is intentionally patient, with long stretches centered on separation, travel, hardship, and survival rather than constant action. For some viewers that gives the story weight. For others, it makes the journey to Cold Mountain feel almost as long as the one in the movie.

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