In the not-too-distant future city of New Rome, "genius" architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) is attempting to pave the way for a new Utopia, using his new material "Megalon", a multi-purpose material which also gives him the ability to stop time. He is opposed by Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) and a director out of his fucking mind. Stuck in the middle are Cicero's daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) and the people of the city, whilst from the sidelines Catilina's driver Fundi Romaine (Laurence Fishbourne) narrates, and television presenter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza) ingratiates herself into the life of not only Catilina, whom she loves, but his treacherous inbred cousin Claudio (Shia LaBouef) and disgustingly wealthy uncle Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight, yay?)...
A palindrome of tedium and a monument to grandiose emptiness, presided over by the decaying husk of auteurism, seizing upon scattered imagery in the same way in which a first time watcher of "Baraka" who is exceedingly enamoured with psychotropic drugs and the works of Terrence Mallick but also really thinks he's "not like the other kids" because he reads books and Shakespeare rather than watches Tik Tok would do.
Made over the course of several lifetimes (including that of his wife, to whom this film is dedicated and deserved far, far, far better), "Megalopolis" cost $120 million in Coppola's own cash, a pet vanity project free from the shackles of studio interference and corporate ghouls tethering his vision and genius.
Where are those 9 producers on "Hellboy" (2019) when you need them?
A preposterously backwards looking attempt to grasp at any idea, hurling images and the most embarassing kind of dialogue in a manner so haphazard you'd think it was a 1st year film student: you'd tell that pretentious cravat-wearing prick to get a real job if he showed you this.
Cast members are not characters, but dolls spewing philosophy at each other in increasingly cheap setpieces (underpopulated nightclubs, C-roll from "King of New York") between title cards etched into stone rather than the memory, as they attempt to jangle keys in front of you in attempt to gain "cult status": Aubrey Plaza femdomming Shia LaBouef and dressing as a slutty Cleopatra; Adam Driver fighting a brick wall as he hallucinates on drugs that he has a million clown arms; recreations of Ancient Roman gladiatorial arenas which look more akin to an event to sell a patricularly odious timeshare; Jason Schwartzmann playing the drums, or Dustin Hoffman randomly dying to collapsing pillar in what feels like a fucking cutaway gag on "Mr Show".
But instead of wonder and weirdness, they grasp at boredom. For a movie about a central character who can "control time" I'll give them this: time did indeed seem to compress and dilate on a whim in this movie, stretching like the shooting schedule of "Apocalypse Now" or the French Plantation Scene of "Apocalypse Now" in a manner which is frankly criminal. It should be illegal to make me look at my watch this much. It should be illegal to make something more tedious than a silent documentary on a "weird dream a pigeon had last night" shot out of focus..
Laurence Fishbourne drones in quotes and narrates events we already watch. An editor would have caught this in post: it's that shit cut of "Blade Runner" but instead of budget Sam Spade, it's Sam Spade quoting the bylines of every Andrew Tate fan on a message board from 2001.
We get terrible renditions of Shakespeare in place of dialogue, and where the rest of the dialogue is not simply quotes, misquotes or pretentious corrections of misquotes with the original quotes: it is repetitive. When not repetitive, it repeats itself. When it is not doing that, it duplicates. And beyond duplication it clones itself. And it's repetitive to boot.
I am entirely unsure what was inside the copious amounts of weed FFC was smoking when he made this movie and molested several people, but I hope that one day it can be weaponised so that we can one day infect other nations with the power to dictate such terrible choices in acting, plotting, coherence and storytelling: that shit was potent enough to eliminate the human mind's capacity for reality, reason and coherent thought.
Shia LaBouef prances like a preening theatre kid, but not in a fun way, more like that annoying one who won't stop singing Hamilton at you in a cafe one night because you mentioned that you liked Lin Manuel Miranda's "In the Heights".
Adam Driver is as wooden as his daughter in "Annette" (just watch "Annette", that movie fucking rules).
Nathalie Emmanuel is done by harder than she is in the "Fast and Furious" movies.
Giancarlo Esposito is... fucking hell... not the worst here, he gives as good a go as any but fuck me, not even he makes this dialogue work.
Aubrey Plaza somehow comes out unscathed: she plays her "Wow Platinum" social climber fem-domme femme fatale money expert golddigger like April Ludgate infiltrating a theatre troupe and mocking them all the way, but somehow getting nominated for both leads in their production of "Blood Brothers" for her talent. I love her.
The central conceit of the film, as he has stated, is to try to compare the fall of Rome to modern day America, and vice versa - in between the Roman names (weirdly casting Cicero as a villain and Catalina as a hero, in a reversal of a conspiracy that only like, 4 scholars and my mate Sam care about) and the blunt force trauma imagery, we get limp-wristed "satire" which I have to read as satire because otherwise my brain cannot comprehend a script this terrible. Red caps thrown at a fallen wannabe grifter dictator who curses their name whilst a sign reads "Make New Rome Great Again!" is discarded.
That sort of bullshit.
But this is not the core concept, as much as he wants it to be.
FFC (who has our leads discuss the fact that their baby who will "lead the future" will be called Francis, and names one of his 2 protagonists after himself) is actually making a movie about a "visionary" who is misunderstood by the world around him, oppressed and threatened and plotted against by rich bankers and wealthy elites who do not care for his vision: and unintentionally makes himself out to be a vile, condescending, pretentious, sexist, sorrowful drug fiend and dickhead surrounded by Yes-Men (fucking James Remar is in this! I legally have to see James Remar movies! And he gets, maybe, like, 2 lines! Fucking BLASPHEMY!); and that's just the character. I almost want to believe that there is some sort of plot against FFC, that there are studio executives with grudges and axes to grind, who have been praying for this film to fail, because that then would at least be some sort of reasonable explanation for this film being so dreadful (other than the obvious and correct assertion that it is simply dreadful). But no such luck.
I know that reading this back makes it sound somewhat interesting, somewhat fascinating as a failure, that in years this is going to be seen as a comedy camp classic, that there will be a reevalutaion of this work:
But no.
Genuinely, do not bother.
This was interminable, there was constant derisive laughter in our audience, and myself and the two people I was watching this went through the stages of grief in about 8 seconsds, or longer: time means nothing.
I can't even find time to talk about how all of the incestuous banking family and villains throw out jussssssssssst enough Yiddish to make it seem deliberate, but not QUITE enough to make it seem like it's being anti-Semitic, or the fact that the movie's sexist as shit to boot (I mean, you could probably guess that).
Fuck this movie.
Fuck me.
It is purely by his own Folly, his own petard hoisted by arrogance (and molestation allegations) that has led him to this disaster, and this will be how he goes. As coherent and meaningful as a collection of untranslated Horus poetry loaded into a shotgun and fired at a passing windmill made of bees. As fucking exciting as reading my fucking blogs.
As doomed as its namesake but nowhere near as interesting, coherent, respectable or with anything to say.
