Forgive me for not buying into the mindless nostalgia.
It's true that you shouldn't "cram" your movies plot and message into a short film, but it is also true that the director and the producers shouldn't become too self indulgent with the length of the film. Padding the length of a movie is worse, to me, than cramming it into a bearable piece of entertainment.
Even if your movie does have a deep meaning behind it, that is no excuse for ignoring some of the most fundamental rules of entertaining media.