Too Long

Rating: Null/10 (3 April 2000)

This is clearly a well-made movie, with good intentions, but it's easily an hour too long. You could actually read most of the book in three hours. And with the ample lighting provided by people checking their Indiglo Watches, you could actually do it in the theatre. If there were more to uncover about the characters in the story, I might have better tolerated the length. But I don't know any more about these people than I did in the first 15 seconds in which they were introduced. They are either Very Good, or Very, Very, Insanely, Ridiculously Bad. Admittedly, Stephen King has never been the master of character depth, but he has never been this predictable. You don't need to go farther than John Coffey's initials to tell you what's going to happen to him. Props to Michael Duncan and Michael Jeter for powerful commitment to their one-dimensional roles.