House Of Gucci Review: 6 Ups & 4 Downs

Downs...

4. The BRUTAL Runtime

As much as so many of us complain these days about blockbuster movies and their exhausting 150+ minute runtimes, dramas don't get let off the hook either.

While no sufficiently great movie is too long nor any terrible film short enough, was there really anyone pining for a movie about the Gucci dynasty's rise and fall clocking in at a bladder-threatening 157 minutes?

There comes a point where it feels like Scott should've just made a mini-series instead, if he couldn't bring himself to trim the fat and deliver a more lean, propulsive end product.

Though the film is certainly never boring, it's painfully clear that Scott included just about every usable scene regardless of whether it really moved the story and characters forward or not.

Numerous scenes featuring Salma Hayek's psychic Giuseppina Auriemma especially feel like they should've been left on the cutting room floor, and there are numerous times where the film rakes over the same point again and again, as if cementing it for lowest common denominator audiences.

This isn't one of those dense movies where it's difficult to see where cuts could be made - there's no way this needed to be so self-indulgently long.