1/10
There is only one positive I can draw from the two hours I spent in the movie theater watching Megalopolis: I’ll never see anything like it again.
Written, directed, and produced entirely by Francis Ford Coppola—director of The Godfather franchise, Apocalypse Now, and The Outsiders—this movie should never have existed in the first place.
Originally written in 1982, Coppola tabled the Megalopolis project after studios refused to fund it and instead opted to direct the third Godfather film, a major box office bomb. 20 years later, he brought the project back with studio support, but the Sept. 11 attacks halted production due to the movie’s themes of destruction in Manhattan. Finally, in 2019, Coppola fully committed to the script. He decided to sell his California winery and spend $120 million dollars self-financing the movie’s production, making Megalopolis one of the biggest budget independent films ever made.
Megalopolis tells the story of Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver), an architect with an unexplained power to stop time, and his goal to turn New Rome into a utopia named Megalopolis run on a mysterious mineral named megalon. The mayor of New Rome, Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), opposes Catalina’s dreamer mentality, opting for more practical solutions to the city’s problems. Cicero’s daughter Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), a dreamer herself, tries to persuade him to listen to Catalina’s new ideas. Meanwhile, media reporter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza) involves herself in a Cleopatra style love triangle with banker Hamilton Crassus (Jon Voight) and his nephew Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf).
None of this really matters, though, as the entire plot of the movie feels like a suggestion. It has absolutely no structure, and feels like a catalyst for Coppola’s weird, idiotic, and basic philosophical ideas.
The plot has no coherence, and the metaphor comparing Ancient Rome to Manhattan shifts throughout the film. At one point, New Rome is referred to as a country, but there is a subplot of characters running for President of the U.S. Further, a Soviet Satellite crashes into downtown New Rome, opening space for Catalina’s Megalopolis project, yet it is never brought up again.
If you’re curious what Catalina’s Megalopolis utopia entails, go to literally any airport: his major invention is a people mover with LED lighting.
Coppola’s complete delusion is the film’s most egregious offense. Seemingly written by an eighth grader who just discovered philosophy, a freshman in college making their first short film, and a senile grandfather on a back-in-my-day tangent all at the same time, this movie is unbelievably pretentious and incoherent.
The film opens with Catalina revealing himself from underneath a cape and reciting the entire “to be or not to be” soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. There’s also a scene in which Julia, Cissero, and Catalina quote Marcus Aurelius at each other, which is supposed to be as suspenseful as some of Coppola’s tensest moments from earlier works.
This might be the first time in his career where Coppola has written female characters with any dimension whatsoever, but, to put it bluntly, he should go back to ignoring their existence entirely. The movie’s depictions of women are incredibly insulting and feel like they haven’t been updated since the script’s original 1982 draft. Most of the female characters have storylines based around sex and romance, plotting to ruin the great plans of their male counterparts, or falling head over heels for some ‘genius’ who pays them no mind or respect. It is truly incomprehensible how Coppola could have his daughter Sofia, one of the most relevant female directors today, on speed-dial and not call her up to tell him how to write accurate women.
The writing is choppy, meaningless, and confusing, and says absolutely nothing. The dialogue is incredibly stilted, speechy, and stiff. The film might also feature some of the single most cringe-worthy moments I’ve ever experienced.
It’s remarkable that A-list actors like Plaza and Esposito agreed to star in this after reading the script, and it’s hard to watch them try their absolute best to make sense of what they are saying is. Having worked with some of the smartest writers ever—Plaza on Park’s and Recreation and White Lotus and Esposito on Breaking Bad and in Do The Right Thing—you can only feel angry that they wasted months of their stellar careers on this.
Driver, Voight, and LeBoeuf come off as pretentious and ridiculous, but it’s hard to blame them.
The only cast member who actively makes the movie worse is Emmanuel. Giving one of this year’s worst performances, it is hard not to laugh when she opens her mouth. Her supposed New York accent is horrible, and she seems to have come straight from a high school improv troupe. She is bad at acting.
When the plot devolves into mafia madness, Coppola shows one stroke of genius. An exhilarating kill scene proves nobody can dramatize a murder like Coppola. But that inspired moment is short-lived.
Coppola comes off as cranky and out of touch with the world around him. The movie seems to be the product of an egotist who believes he is God’s gift to mankind. It is either the worst drama of Coppola’s career or his first satirical comedic masterpiece. Either way, it is unsupervised chaos, a warning against unchecked power, and a true once-in-a-lifetime experience.
This movie serves as an important reminder to the film industry; screenwriters, editors, and studio executives are talented people who have jobs for a reason.
