You absolutely must see Megalopolis

It’s possible that you haven’t heard about Megalopolis, the latest film from formerly-legendary director Francis Ford Coppola. (Quite likely his final film.) It’s likely that you haven’t heard about a Coppola film since 1997’s The Rainmaker, a John Grisham adaptation that starred Matt Damon and Danny DeVito. You probably didn’t remember The Rainmaker as a Coppola film, if you remembered it at all.

If you know anything about Coppola (or if you happened to watch The Offer, a Paramount+ miniseries about the making of The Godfather), you probably know that he has always had a contentious relationship with the major Hollywood studios. After The Rainmaker, he took his ball and went home, spending the majority of his time since then running his Northern California vineyard and wine business, self-funding a trio of low budget films he wrote and directed, and for some reason going to bat for a convicted pedophile.

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But for many years now, Coppola has been talking about his desire to finally make what he’s long viewed as his magnum opus, Megalopolis. A couple of years ago, he declared war on Hollywood and went all in, selling Francis Ford Coppola Winery in order to fund the film, free of any studio meddling, with complete creative control and the ability to set his own budget. And from casting up through the film’s release two weeks ago, he’s done everything he can think of to tank his own status as a legendary filmmaker, and to squander most of the goodwill he had with cinephiles. From allegations and lawsuits about his behavior on the set, to specifically casting “canceled” actors to stick it to “woke” Hollywood (you can’t even make a Megalopolis anymore, because of woke), to the actual content and presentation of the movie, which is at a blistering 46% with an audience score of 35% over on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s outpacing the 33/31 of Joker 2: Jokin’ Hard or Hardly Jokin’, but that’s likely because Megalopolis’ opening weekend grossed $4 million and Jok2r grossed $20 million on its first day.

So what is Megalopolis about? It’s about an alternate version of present-day Earth where the Roman Empire* never fell, so New York City is New Rome, but somehow the Statue of Liberty still exists, and 9/11 still happened? It’s an allegory about how … uh … society is bad? That our politicians have a responsibility to humanity, but also they should be willing to let society die in order to build a utopia? It’s EXTREMELY muddled and all over the fucking place and long stretches of the film are devoted to reciting Shakespeare or Roman emperors. In large part, it’s about how scheming women can only be undone by virtuous rich men.

Is Megalopolis good? Absolutely not. This is a terrible, ill-advised film which like 40% of the time looks like absolute dogshit. It’s mostly actors visibly struggling to remember diabolically horrible lines while hitting their marks in front of a green screen. It resembles nothing more — in tone, in theme, in presentation, in spirit — than if someone had given Neil Breen $120 million and access to legitimate movie stars.

But WATCHING Megalopolis? That’s a thrilling experience, and one you should not miss while it remains in theaters. At least in Los Angeles, word of mouth seems to be picking up, because we saw a Saturday afternoon showing at an AMC and we were delighted to find ourselves in a completely full theater of people who became increasingly emboldened over the movie’s two hours and 18 minutes to laugh, loudly and often, at the sheer audacity on display. Highest possible recommendation.

If I need to sweeten the pot, here are 10 actual things that happen in Megalopolis.

1. Aubrey Plaza plays a financial reporter and kinda-singer named Wow Platinum. Wow Platinum.
2. You see Shia LeBeouf’s pubes.
3. Shia LeBeouf has no eyebrows in this film and every scene he’s in has a new type of fake eyebrow drawn on or pasted to his face like Stan Sitwell from Arrested Development.
4. Jon Voight’s pivotal scene involves him saying, “Look at this boner.”
5. The largest exposition dump in the film happens during a cunnilingus scene.
6. Nathalie Emmanuel’s character delivers a monologue where she says “— Marcus Aurelius” as an attribution after three consecutive sentences.
7. Adam Driver’s character controls time.
8. Adam Driver’s character — “Cesar Catilina,” if you can believe it — has developed a new material called Megalon, which he intends to use to construct a new city called Megalopolis. The Megalon material was made(?) from his dead wife(??)
9. A scandal involving statutory rape and arrest and imprisonment and scandal is resolved within 120 seconds.
10. The main innovation of Megalopolis appears to be “moving sidewalks.”

BONUS: At one point, Shia LeBeouf climbs up onto a tree stump that just happens to be in the shape of a swastika, and this is never explained or remarked upon.

DOUBLE BONUS: Anything confusing in the movie is never explained, and anything very obvious is over-explained. At one point, a guy says “who wants to buy my military coat?” and Dustin Hoffman walks past and scoffs, “Pathetic. That man was in the military a year ago, and now he’s selling his uniform.”

Anyway, if you have any level of tolerance for cringe whatsoever, you must go see this movie. Feel free to laugh, because you’ll rarely see anything more absurd in a movie theater.

*The “how often do you think about the Roman Empire” meme has never applied to me. I actively avoid thinking about the Roman Empire any more than I absolutely have to, which is generally when I have to watch another fucking trailer for Gladiator 2: Gladiatin’ Hard or Hardly Gladiatin’. Ironically, my wife thinks about the Roman Empire constantly, which I applaud her for.

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