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By the time you've sat through the current spate of Hollywood blockbusters, your eyes would be glazed. And your butt, sore.
Mega-budget movies these days are getting longer and longer. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix clocks in at 138 minutes.
That's not even at the high end. The crown for the longest film this season goes to Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, at a jaw-dropping 168 minutes.
Lagging not far behind are Transformers (144 minutes) and Spider-man 3 (140 minutes).
They follow the pattern set by last year's releases: Superman Returns (164 minutes), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (150 minutes) and The Da Vinci Code (149 minutes).
This has led Stephen Frears, the British director behind The Queen, to comment in an online interview: "I do think that most films are too long. I've learnt to be sympathetic to the audience. If nothing else, keep it short."
Lengthy blockbusters fly in the face of conventional Hollywood wisdom that they should be kept under two hours so as to maximise the number of screenings a day and hence, profits.
Indeed, up till the end of the 1990s, titles like Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (1993) and its 1997 sequel ran just a shade over two hours.
Two developments account for the current trend: First, their astronomical budgets, which give film-makers a reason to call their productions "epics".
This came about because of the phenomenal box office success of James Cameron's 194-minute-long Titanic (1997), and Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which clock in at a combined 558 minutes. Both productions are multiple-Oscar winners.
Jackson's own remake of King Kong (2005) took twice as long to tell the same story as the 1933 original.
Pirates of the Caribbean producer Jerry Bruckheimer rationalises this as giving audiences more bang for their buck.
"When you walk out of that theatre," he told an American newspaper, "you want to feel like you've had a complete meal."
Compare this scenario to the controversy in 1985 when Brazil director Terry Gilliam had his film cut by Universal Studios to 94 minutes, from the original 133.
He had to stage a media campaign before the studio capitulated.
Intertwined with the topic of lengthiness is the prevalence of the director's cut.
Originally intended to restore a director's vision of the film on its DVD release, it has since become an exercise in ego massaging.
For instance, Big (1988), Penny Marshall's lightweight comedy starring Tom Hanks as a boy trapped in a man's body, ballooned by some 45 minutes on the director's cut.
But audiences are voting with their feet.
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, for instance, plundered just US$590 million worldwide, a far cry from its predecessor, which made more than US$1 billion.
As producer Harvey Weinstein admitted in an online interview, following the commercial flop of the three-hour-plus double-bill Grindhouse: "Our research showed the length kept people away. We originally intended to get it all in two hours and 30 minutes. That would have been a better time."
- TODAY/so
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