Frances Ford Coppola’s spectacular movie mess is an overstuffed stew of past, present and future.
Megalopolis
Starring Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LeBeouf & Jon Voight
Directed by Frances Ford Coppola
Rated R
In theaters Friday, Sept. 27
This big, bloated mess-terpiece of a movie is a longtime passion project for director Frances Ford Coppola, a dreamscape of ideas he’s been stewing on for decades. Set in a near-future New York City now renamed New Rome—that looks like Manhattan dressed up for a big toga party—it’s about a crumbling American society and a visionary architect (Adam Driver) seeking to remake it into utopia. There are warring politicians, abusive cops, scheming dames, chariot races at Madison Square Garden and a mystery substance called Megalon that can repair flesh, help crippled dogs walk and make see-thru invisi-dresses. But can it create a whole new world?
Oh, and time can also be stopped, if you’ve got the mojo to do it.
It’s a lot to unpack, and it’s often wildly incomprehensible, an impenetrable cinematic chowder chock-full of ideas drawn from world history, old Hollywood, futuristic sci-fi, classic literature and modern turmoil. There’s the full “To be or not to be” soliloquy from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Jon Voight dressed like Robin Hood and bragging about his erection, and Shia LeBeouf rocking a mega-mullet. Hey, is that Dustin Hoffman, Talia Shire (Coppola’s sister), Jason Schwartzman (Coppola’s nephew and Shire’s son), and singer-actress Grace Vanderwaal crooning in a swing at a vestal virgin auction? Yep, yep, yep and yep! Game of Thrones’ Nathalie Emmanuel wears a Red Riding Hood cloak and plays Driver’s love interest, Laurence Fishburne narrates in stately tones, and Aubrey Plaza is a horny gold-digger TV reporter named—I’m not kidding—Wow Platinum. Giancarlo Esposito—who has nearly 200 acting credits but is probably best known for Breaking Bad—is a mayor with a major secret. To boldface the movie’s preachy parallels to Rome collapsing from a mighty civilization into a fractured empire ruled by tyrants, characters are given names including Cesar, Cicero and Crassus. Just so we get it.
Massive colossus statues collapse under the sheer fatigue of world-weariness, sighing helpless and broken in the streets. A Russian satellite plummets downward on a collision course with Earth. Cars trail each other down dark, rain-soaked alleys. There’s a female body in the morgue marked Jane Doe, but who is she really? There are orgiastic parties, angry mobs and gladiators walloping each other in a three-ring circus maxiumus. An overheated sex scene is a prelude to an Ides of March-like confrontation in a steam room. In my notes from the screening, I wrote down “Caligula meets Chinatown.”
It’s impossible to miss the movie’s central themes—that America is headed down a path of self-inflicted destruction, and the world has always teetered back and forth between innovation and the status quo. With a fervent swirl of messaging about creating a better future, it’s a big, eye-popping, overstuffed spectacle, the director’s own sprawling, architectural concoction bridging past and present.
Coppola is one of the leading filmmakers of the 20th century, an iconic director and producer who’s given us landmark movies like The Godfather and its sequel, Apocalypse Now and The Conversation. But he’s also put out some real stinkers, like Jack, Rumble Fish and Twixt. He swings big and sometimes knocks it out of the park. And sometimes he misses. Megalopolis will likely go down as another ambitious, super-showy, Megaloaded, all-over-the-place movie misfire.
But hey, Shia LaBeouf gets shot in the ass with two arrows—at least those hit their mark.
—Neil Pond
The Media Tourist 