Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

How is this the outcome of $120 million and decades of thought and planning? At least Francis Ford Coppola doesn’t regret the budget.

Megalopolis is the kind of movie you have to watch more than once to truly understand and absorb. Unfortunately, that would mean you’d have to watch it more than once. One comment online said “comprehending this movie is impossible for the human brain.”

Adam Driver stars (?) as an ambitious but publicly hated architect named Cesar Catilina who is attempting to rebuild his city (a dystopian NYC called “New Rome”) into a utopia called “Megalopolis”. He is thwarted at every turn by mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), but eventually accepted by Cicero’s daughter, Julia, portrayed by Nathalie Emmanuel. This two-sentence descriptor of the plot doesn’t take into account the numerous (plethoric) subplots involving a diverse cast of characters, each crazier than the next, brought to life by everyone from Shia LaBeouf to SNL’s Chloe Fineman to Jon Voight and Laurence Fishburne.

There are some interesting sequences and creative moments, like when we see Cesar driving through the city, witnessing the distress of a dilapidated New Rome, and even the statues are bent over with exhaustion (a great detail).

But then Cesar sees an illuminated flower stand, glowing like it’s from another world, and he buys a bouquet to bring to his wife, asleep in another realm. He visits with her, transcending time and space (in his current reality, his wife has passed away), all the while somehow watched through an inter-dimensional window by Julia.

Did that snippet of the story confuse you? Feel weird and insane and pointless and strange? Welcome to the club of people who have attempted to comprehend this plot. A recent Vulture review summarizes nicely:

It’s easy to become distracted within the world of Megalopolis because there are a number of tangents, many of which have more to do with Coppola’s apparent fixations on contemporary society (technology being used for ill, corporate takeovers, cancel culture) than they do with the plot of the movie…. a doubling and tripling down on what, or whom, Coppola blames for societal collapse.

The scenes are sometimes gorgeous — etched out of gold and extravagance. They can also be messy and incoherently strange. Everything in this movie is open to opinion and imaginative interpretation. If someone told me this was their favorite movie, I would accept that. If someone said they hated it, I would accept that, too. It’s possible every person who watches this will react differently (although the majority consensus does seem to be total confusion). Nothing about this movie or it’s reception could surprise me anymore, but one thing is clear…

This movie is bad.

My rating: 1.5/5

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