“Megalopolis” is One of the Worst Movies Ever Made – Review

“Megalopolis” is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. That is not hyperbole, that is fact. Here we go.

Wildly acclaimed filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola’s 40-years-in-the-making passion project “Megalopolis” follows a few rich families in the fictional city of New Rome. Adam Driver is our lead, Cesar Catilina, a genius architect with the never explained ability to control time and the inventor of Megalon, a substance that can accomplish… basically anything, I guess. It’s never really explained. Cesar’s main conquest, however, is to convince the people of New Rome and its stubborn mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) to ditch the flailing current model of the city and embrace an idealized model designed but not yet created by Cesar called Megalopolis. The city rumbles between Cesar and Cicero’s battling ideologies. Meanwhile, Cicero’s daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) and Cesar enter a love affair, Cesar’s haywire cousin Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf) is scheming to take control over the city, and the reporter Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza) — yes, that’s her actual name — is climbing the ranks of power by sleeping with and marrying influential figures, namely the wealthy Hamilton Crassus (Jon Voight). Oh, and the story is narrated by Laurence Fishburne, who plays Cesar’s chauffeur and enjoys monologuing empty platitudes to the bewildered audience. There are a plethora of subplots colliding simultaneously throughout this film, none of which make any sense.

Coppola is potentially the most confusing filmmaker in history. He made my all-time favorite movie and what I’d argue to be the greatest film ever in “The Godfather,” yet now he dumps “Megalopolis” on us, a film which he has repeatedly claimed to be his true style, whereas films like “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now” were just learned styles that he doesn’t seem all that passionate about. What he is passionate about, however, is inflating his own massive, massive, massive, ego. The man has an absolutely gargantuan holier-than-thou view of himself. Never before has a movie been more self-aggrandizing of its creator. There is literally a scene when someone mentions that if her baby is a boy, she’ll name him FRANCIS, and that he’s representative of some great future. What a pretentious, self-obsessed, out of touch, loathsome, egregious, and utterly irritating man Coppola is.

Coppola is also one of the worst writers in recent memory, apparently, as “Megalopolis” contains some of the most unintentionally hilarious dialogue you will ever hear. The lines range from cringe-inducing empty word salad about time and love and Coppola’s faux philosophies, and just the oddest and most juvenile slop. For instance, early on in the film Wow Platinum is getting all intimate with Cesar and spurts out the greatest line in cinema history: “You’re anal as hell, Cesar. I, on the other hand, am oral as hell.” Those are actual sentences from a film written and directed by the same man who made “The Godfather.” Allow me to cite a few more bangers. Crassus lies in bed with a crossbow underneath the covers by his pelvis, and asks Wow Platinum “How do you like my boner?” Julia spies on Cesar mourning his deceased wife and explains to herself and the audience, “He still loves her.” In another scene, Platinum explains her evil scheme to herself and says, “One, two, three, yippie-yee,” and minutes later shoves Clodio’s face between her legs and has him repeatedly shout “Yes, Auntie Wow!” This film is at its most enjoyable when the actors are forced to deliver these bonkers lines that only a deranged lunatic could scribe.

The dialogue brings an honestly enjoyable “so bad it’s good” factor to “Megalopolis,” as do its unbelievably clunky visual effects that gives Neil Breen’s “Cade: The Tortured Crossing” a run for its very little money. There are also a plethora of confounding wait, WHAT?! moments that come fresh out of thin air to amplify the unintended laugh factor, namely when a satellite randomly crashes down onto New Rome and it’s almost never brought up again in any of the scenes afterward.

Then we have the atrocious performances from some fresh hell that surely must serve as career massacres. Adam Driver delivers the worst work of his entire career, appearing almost as pretentious as Coppola and providing a schizophrenic performance gyrating between subdued and insane. Shia LaBeouf is all insane with his performance, although to be fair he was doing the best he could with the feces-ridden writing he was given. Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman (the latter being in this movie for all of four seconds) show up to make the audience wish they were watching “Midnight Cowboy,” both actors appearing dead in their scenes. The normally phenomenal Aubrey Plaza somehow goes too Aubrey Plaza, something I never thought I’d say. Laurence Fishburne is given an insultingly pathetic role that he can’t help but flail in. Yet potentially the worst performance comes to us from Nathalie Emmanuel, who embarrasses herself throughout every scene with her over-the-top 1930s/40s screwball comedy acting combined with soap opera trashiness.

The one and only good performance (and the only redeeming factor in the whole film) is Giancarlo Esposito, who somehow rises out of this movie’s repugnant stench-ridden ashes unscathed. He grounds his character in reality as much as is humanly possible, and drives the only semi-decent scene in the film, when his character pleads to his daughter to bring their relationship back to where it was before she met Cesar.

Unfortunately, despite the unintentionally funny dialogue, VFX, and plot turns, most of the film is just a pretentious bore, a meditation on everything and nothing at the same time. None of the characters are even remotely relatable or compelling, all of whom are either one-dimensional or zero-dimensional. The plot is so nonsensical that you just stop caring after the ten-minute mark. You only ever get emotionally invested when you recoil from Coppola’s disgusting pretentiousness where he pretends to be a true artist when in reality he is a pitiful shell of a former storyteller.

“Megalopolis” also features staggeringly ignorant, juvenile, uneducated, on-the-nose, and misguided at best political commentary that feels straight out of an upper class spoiled college student handbook. Coppola has a simultaneously idealized and toxic view of humanity, glorifying his favored side of the political spectrum and demonizing the other. The most significant politicking this film does, however, is raising the concerns of the audience as to how sexist Coppola is, because all his female characters merely exist to be drooled over, with sequences of them fondling each others’ bodies for the director’s satisfaction, and without them having actual depth. Not that the male characters are well-written, but at least they have more to their characterization than their physical appearance. The women of “Megalopolis” are treated as architecture, not as human beings.

“Megalopolis” will serve as the ultimate litmus test for critics. Any self-proclaimed film critic who calls this cinematic war crime a legitimately good film just because it’s “ambitious” can never be taken seriously again. Ambition is not a synonym for quality. Just because a film makes gutsy choices doesn’t mean those choices are clever. In the case of Coppola’s condescending and pretentious cesspool of a movie, his choices are staggeringly abysmal across the board.

Ultimately, and I know I’m not the first one to say this, “Megalopolis” is essentially a $120 million Neil Breen film. It shares that same WTF factor and formula of long periods of awkward boredom followed by the most boisterously funny scenes you’ll ever experience. It is the modern-day “Caligula.” Except less interesting and more embarrassing for everyone involved.

F