Extra Large but without french fries

Rating: 7/10 (8 January 2008)

If you don't get the summary joke or hate me because of it, I can't change that. Why I chose it though? I'll come back to that in a second, but let's start:
For the sheer scope of the movie you have to love it. By scope I mean the photography (beautiful pictures) and the sound (a fantastic sound design, that could be used to teach students about film music). All this though has to work as a whole. And it does work. It's a good movie and because of it's length and the quality of it's production it's regarded as one of the classic movies of all times.
Call it sacrilege though, but I do have some objections to that. Yes it is a fine movie (after all I gave it a 7/10, which is pretty good in my book, although far away from great), but it is just too darn long! And that is where my summary line/reference comes into play. And although we're following Ben Hur, there's a very big side story (the title of the movie was originally named after "that side story" too). And although the similarities in both the sub- and main plot are evident it just makes the whole thing longer ... Epic movie it is then, in all the meanings that there are. An essential movie to watch, but afterwards don't be afraid to say that you thought it was too long!