So, just got back from watching this... I suppose I should give some background

Francis Ford Coppola is one of the most highly accredited directors of our time, responsible for such films as The Godfather, Apocalypse Now, and others. Personally, the only film of his I'd seen was The Conversation which I actually really loved. However, Coppola is a well-known, for lack of a better term, piece of shit known for appaling work conditions so bad they made a documentary about it and on this very film allegedly sexually harassing female extras on set.

I do want to make it known I wasn't planning on spending money to watch this in the cinema for that reason, but was able to watch it for free. Despite the controversy, I was willing to give it a fair and open-minded shot. I saw this strange viral clip going around and felt that, even if the movie sucked, it would be interesting. There would be something of value to gleam from it.

The film had been in the works for over 30 years, and almost completely self-funded by Coppola himself. A passion project in the truest sense of the words. So what was the result?

I don't say this lightly. This is the worst movie I've ever seen. It's somehow nonsensical and boring at the same time. The writing is awful. The characters are cardboard cutouts. The film constantly tries to confuse the audience with pretentious prose despite being excruciatingly predictable. Its veneer of 'deep and thought provoking' philosophy is a sham, as I found the film's worldview to be completely expected of ego-driven, out-of-touch millionaire.

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Some of the shots looked cool. Also, Aubrey Plaza's acting was funny.

The film follows visionary architect Cesar Catalina, played by an extremely bored Adam Driver, who tries to save the dystopian city of New Rome by tearing it down and building a utopia, the titular Megalopolis! But, his evil socialite cousin Clodio Pulcher (Shia LeBeouf), seductive golddigger ex Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), and the stubborn Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) try to stop him. Also, the Mayor's daughter, Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel) becomes enraptured by Cesar and learns more about him. You didn't have a stroke by the way, these are all their real names.

Without getting into spoilers, the plot is as simple as what I wrote above. You can see every plot point happening 20 minutes beforehand. What makes the film so confusing is that it will often diverge into jarring side stories that have almost nothing to do with the main plot and could've been removed entirely. The purpose of these thematically confusing detours are to deliver Coppola's "biting social commentary" which... I will get to in more detail in the Spoiler section of the review.

Then there's the acting performances; I could see what Coppola was trying to do. Most films use a naturalistic style of acting where the actors try to convince you with realistic performance. This film is more surreal so everyone is supposed to have more theatrical acting, like a Broadway play. That's why everyone sounds weird and randomly breaks off into tangents of Shakespearean prose. I get what he was going for, and was willing to go along with it, but it was still executed badly even if you accept that framework.

All of the actors lack direction and feel like they're all just doing their own thing. Plaza and LeBouf seemed to understand the assignment and were the best parts of the film in my opinion, making the best of an awful script. The two leads, Driver and Emmanuel, did not pull it off and all of their scenes were slogs with almost no chemistry between them.

The lack of narrative cohesion, awful acting, and pretentious script combine to create an absolute bore of a film. It just dragged on and on and on. It felt so much longer than 2 hours. I would've been bored to death, if I wasn't occasionally being shocked by this film's gross philosophy it kept spewing out which I will get to in the Spoiler section.

If you want to watch this movie yourself, I don't think the spoilers would ruin? it for you, but you've been warned.

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The movie has almost no plot twists or character revelations. Everyone is pretty straight forward. I kept thinking something bad was going to be revealed about the protagonist, like some kind of moral complexity. But no. Cesar, the gifted genius, is actually a total saint. He's a genuine messiah who has the powers to save New Rome out of the goodness of his heart and as a true artist. All of his enemies are just trying to tear down a hardworking hero.

There's even a brief plot point where he is falsely accused of statutory rape and it was all part of secret plan to destroy his reputation— the plan of course hatched up by his crossdressing metrosexual cousin and manipulative ex-girlfriend.

Hm, I wonder why Coppola dedicated a subplot to a woman trying to ruin a successful man's reputation through rape accusations. I really wonder if this has anything to do with his current allegations, but hey who can say?

The film in general is misogynistic as hell! This movie has a total Madonna-Whore complex where every female character is either

1. A sexual object/deviant who tries to lure the male characters away from their noble path or
2. A submissive muse who inspires the male characters and is "too pure for this world"

A major plot point of the film is that for Cesar to have the inspiration to all his great things, he needs a woman to love and give him something to fight for. Julia Cicero fills that role, becoming his love interest and as soon as that happens, that is her entire character. The entire movie is obsessed with this man-woman dichotomy with lines like

• "What would be the most important part of your utopia?" "Marriage."
• "In Rome, the men ruled the empire, while the women ruled the home."

This movie loves its traditional norms. All heterosexual love is shown as pure, able to create life, and the future of humanity. All homosexual love is shown as either deviant or titillating, happening between promiscuous party goers in seedy clubs, contributing to the downfall of civilization.

The only gender non-conforming character in the film, Clodio who crossdresses, is shown to be a vindictive sex pest who engages in incest and poisons the minds of the ignorant masses against the noble Cesar. He also turns into an allegory for Trump and Hitler, like super unsubtly in the latter half. He's just a total anomaly of a character that represents every ideology that Coppola sees as bad and "degenerate" with no regard for cohesion.

I really, really tried to find more in the film. Like if there was some hidden meanings I wasn't getting, but in the end it just felt like a very shallow fable. Just a retelling of the myth of the righteous uberman who will save the ignorant masses from some vague "degeneracy" that is "ruining Western civilization." In this world, government regulation and the stupid masses just get in the way of the "generous entrepeneurs" who really know what's best for humanity. Like I said, it made me feel gross as I watched the credits fall.

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If you asked me before Megalopolis what makes a bad movie, I would say insincerity. Before this, I'd say the worst movie I'd seen was The Flash (2023), a lazy cash grab that reeked of corporate meddling and had everything I hated about modern Hollywood. I'd say, "better to watch a poorly made movie that had heart, than one that had no care." But now I've found an exception.

Megalopolis is without a doubt a sincere movie. It's a passion project, solely funded by one guy who wanted to tell a story 30 years in the making. But just because it has more heart, doesn't mean its better. The film may have been made with more intention, but these were bad intentions.

I'm not gonna say this movie has the worst message ever. You could of course point to some shlock from the Daily Wire or a racist film from the past that has a more explicitly bad moral than Megalopolis. But, what makes me hate this film more is all the wasted effort; not only the wasted talent and money to make it, but all the patience the movie demands from the audience watching it. It demands so much from the viewer and gives nothing back except for shallow, egotistical ramblings. Because of that, I've never enjoyed watching a movie less than this one.

I've seen critics call this a "beautiful mess" and I would not go nearly far enough to call it beautiful, but I suppose I could recommend it for only the most curious movie fans out there. Just to see how baffling it is.

If you enjoy:	trainwrecks	only watch for morbid curiousity

If you dislike:	bad acting bad story bad message	No.