Don’t get me started on why I think the real golden age of cinema was when movies needed to be 90 minutes long to fit on a VHS tape. I’m a firm believer that the art of editing for time has been completely lost in the advent of the blu-ray. Any movie over 2 hours (which is most of them these days) gets an automatic eyeroll from me, and part of my overall quality judgment of any movie is how many times I check my watch – or in the case of The Irishman, pause the Netflix to see how much time is left.

Clocking in at 3 hours and 29 minutes, I’ve been dreading having to watch The Irishman since before it was even nominated. A coworker suggested breaking it up like a mini-series and watching it over a few days, which was a brilliant and useful idea that helped the medicine go down easier, but also posed the questions – where is the line between movie and mini-series? I feel like the Irishman absolutely crossed that line (and could have been much improved by a few well placed commercial breaks), but whatever. Apparently Martin Scorsese and the Academy insist that its a “movie”, so here we are.

I will say that I hated the Irishman less that I thought I would. I don’t love Scorsese or mob movies, so I started at a disadvantage, but it was an interesting enough story to carry me through (with frequent pausing for snacks and pee breaks). That said, there is absolutely NOTHING remarkable or award-worthy about this movie. It’s just a super straightforward screen version of a possibly-true book written by some mob guy who claims to have killed Jimmy Hoffa. Of course the Academy has boners for it because it stars all their dusty old favorite guys who only play mobsters (or watered down versions of mobsters). It’s like their favorite band got back together for a farewell tour. Both the director and the lead actors (Pesci, De Niro, and Pacino) are all in their late 70s and we’re all just really relieved that they got to do one last project together before one of them dies.

But don’t confuse this relief with award-worthiness. This movie was fine, but I didn’t find the acting or direction to be anything spectacular. In fact, Robert De Niro couldn’t have made a less convincing Irishman if he was wearing full Lucky the Leprechaun drag. Everyone did the thing that they always do just fine, and it was nice to see that Ray Romano is still getting work. Oh, and for some reason none of the women had any lines. I give it a solid C for effort – although it could have been a still-not-award-worthy but better movie (B+ even) by losing about an hour and a half worth of weight.

I give its chances of taking home the gold about 20%, but it’s sort of sweet that they wanted to give ole Martin one last pat on the back.