Do you have a pension fund? Some kind of health insurance that behaves like a bank account? Anything that looks like a mutual fund investment? If so, either your CPA is undercharging you or he is not doing his job properly. I you live a "standard" European life, following the us tax code to the letter is going to put you at a 50-100 page filing.
And if you don't follow the letter - well, depends how much the IRS thinks they can extract from you.
There's a lot of boilerplate in the filing, so yeah, it's pretty long. It's pretty mechanical though: you go down a checklist and make sure you've filed everything. I do have a pension fund whose existence I report as an asset. It's exempt from taxation, because the state-administered Danish pension system is specifically exempted in the Denmark–U.S. tax treaty, but I report it on form 8938 and through the FBAR as an account I have an interest in. Healthcare is a single-payer state system, so no accounts or insurances are involved. I do agree things could be simpler, but it's really not the most complex thing about living in another country.
And if you don't follow the letter - well, depends how much the IRS thinks they can extract from you.