Movie Review: 'Megalopolis' a Mega-Mess

Megalopolis

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

Written by Francis Ford Coppola

Starring Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Jon Voight

Release Date September 27th, 2024

Published September 30th, 2024

I was very excited about Megalopolis at the time it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year. The reaction from critics and audiences at Cannes was divided to a remarkable extreme with some calling it a work of genius and others calling it a complete disaster. In my experience, movies that are that divisive tend to have value in that they are unlikely to be boring. As someone whose profession centers around watching mainstream, cookie cutter movies, the notion of a genuinely original and completely unpredictable movie is very exciting.

What a disappointment it was then, to watch Megalopolis and feel nearly nothing for the movie. While I remain impressed by the intention and originality of Megalopolis, the dominant feeling I have after watching Megalopolis is apathy. Disappointment is a close second but not the disappointment of being let down by Francis Ford Coppola but rather, the disappointment that Megalopolis left me so indifferent. I wanted to feel invigorated by a feeling of either the joy of seeing a visionary epic or by seeing something so utterly incomprehensible as to cause awe.

Neither of those feelings emerged. Instead, the lasting feeling inspired by Francis Ford Coppola’s deeply personal $120 million dollar gamble is emptiness, a complete lack of any significant emotion whatsoever. And that feeling sucks. I know that isn’t the most elegant way of stating my feelings but it is honest and to the point. I hate that Megalopolis left me feeling next to nothing. Not pity for the actors stranded in Coppola’s muddled vision, none of the giddiness inspired by seeing something truly original, simply nothing whatsoever. I am achingly indifferent to Megalopolis.

Megalopolis stars Adam Driver as Cesar Catalina, a visionary architect with a dark past. Living in the country of New Rome, and functioning as the country’s chief designer, Catalina finds himself at the center of controversy over his newest creation, Megalopolis, a city of the future that may or may not displace many from the poor neighborhoods of the capital city. Catalina’s chief critic is the Mayor of New Rome, Franklin Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito). Cicero believes that Catalina is mortgaging the struggling present of New Rome in favor of the expensive pipedream of Megalopolis.

Treachery surrounds both Catalina and Cicero as power brokers and influencers of various stripes look to undermine one or both of these powerful men for their own gain. These include Catalina’s treacherous, fashion designer cousin, Clodio (Shia LaBeouf), his name spelled Clodio because he’s a clod, get it? The movie is not subtle. There is also the insidious financial influencer and reporter, Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza, another quite unsubtle shot at the media and modern influencer culture. Further on the periphery are powerful men played by Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight, though they are merely here as favors to their friendly director. They have little to offer to the movie as a whole, unless the sight of Voight shooting Shia LeBeouf in the backside with a tiny gold arrow is a scene you need to see.

Catalina’s main ally in this treacherous new world comes from an unexpected place. Nathalie Emmanuel stars as Julia Cicero, the daughter of the Mayor, and the woman who falls in love with Cicero and further inspires him to make Megalopolis a reality. Together they will build the future of New Rome but only if they can overcome Julia’s father and the various sycophants, liars, grifters, cheaters and scum whose only goal is to keep brilliant men like Catalina Caesar from creating a future of sustainable growth and prosperity for everyone.

Megalopolis is a deeply earnest movie that somehow makes the case for both Ayn Rand’s vision of the great male genius and the woman who loves him and a liberal fantasy about an egalitarian society free of capitalistic greed. And yet, Megalopolis fails to make this bizarre, seemingly impossible pair of influences interesting. They are both there but neither emerges into a point that drives the movie. Instead, the film continuously diverts into nonsense that includes a desperately overlong drug trip for Catalina, a confusing parody of Donald Trump’s populist outrage, via Shia LeBeouf’s provocateur, and a backstory about Catalina’s wife and whether or not she killed herself or was killed by Catalina.

These side quests muddy the plot, extend the movie to a needless length, and fail to make a single resonant point. The drug trip is, at the very least, visually interesting, but it makes no point whatsoever and could be cut with little impact on the story being told. The film also devotes a bizarre amount of screen time to parody of a Britney Spears style pop star whose virginity is the subject of countrywide pride until it’s revealed that she’s not really a virgin, leading her into a bad girl phase. Why is this a subplot? Who the hell knows. Nothing in the movie justifies the inclusion of this character or her virginity or lack thereof. Coppola wants to decry our obsession with pop stars, I guess, even if doing so comes at the expense of telling a coherent story.

Megalopolis is messy and muddy and strange. It occasionally looks gorgeous but it also occasionally looks embarrassing, as if it were shot on a bad green screen by someone unfamiliar with the technology. But, by the end, it all sort of evens out into forgettable rather than bad or good. Coppola’s good intentions are evident, even among the mess, but these good intentions can’t compete with his desire to divert into parodies of aspects of popular culture that Coppola finds distasteful. Perhaps if Coppola had a Tumblr blog he could put his cultural sh**-posts there instead of ruining his massive budget movie with them.

Find my archive of more than 20 years and more than 2000 movie reviews at SeanattheMovies.blogspot.com. Find my modern review archive on my Vocal Profile, linked here. Follow me on Twitter at PodcastSean. Follow the archive blog on Twitter at SeanattheMovies. Listen to me talk about movies on the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast. If you have enjoyed what you have read, consider subscribing to my writing on Vocal. If you’d like to support my writing, you can do so by making a monthly pledge or by leaving a one-time tip. Thanks!