‘Megalopolis’ Review Thread

I will continue to update this post as reviews come in.

Rotten Tomatoes: Rotten

Critics Consensus: More of a creative manifesto than a cogent narrative feature, Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis is an overstuffed opus that's equal parts stimulating and slapdash.

	Score	Number of Reviews	Average Rating
All Critics	52%	82	4.60/10
Top Critics	57%	30	3.80/10

Metacritic: 60 (32 Reviews)

Sample Reviews:

Peter Debruge, Variety – Megalopolis is anything but lazy, and while so many of the ideas don’t pan out as planned, this is the kind of late-career statement devotees wanted from the maverick, who never lost his faith in cinema.

David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter – I can’t say I was always engaged over its two hours-plus run time, but I was always curious about where it was going next. Is it a good movie? Not by a long stretch. But it’s not one that can be easily dismissed, either.

Ben Croll, TheWrap – The film is expertly assembled and sleepily directed all at once; it wows with its imagination and erudition all while leaving you little more than bemused.

Joshua Rothkopf, Los Angeles Times – Once you let go of the understandable dream of Coppola returning with another masterpiece, there is much to enjoy in Megalopolis, especially its cast members, leaning into their moments with an abandon that was probably a job requirement.

Peter Howell, Toronto Star – It’s hard to believe the same brilliant director who made The Godfather, The Conversation and Apocalypse Now also birthed this monstrosity, which is wrong in so many ways, from its insipid screenplay and terrible direction to its bizarre casting. 1/4

Barry Hertz, Globe and Mail – Megalopolis might be Coppola’s decades-in-the-making passion project, an epic of ambition and imagination, but it is also a magnificent mess of a masterpiece, as irredeemably silly as it is sincerely sublime.

Peter Bradshaw, Guardian – This is a passion project without passion: a bloated, boring and bafflingly shallow film, full of high-school-valedictorian verities about humanity’s future. 2/5

Kevin Maher, Times (UK) – This is 138 stultifying minutes of ill-conceived themes, half-finished scenes, nails-along-the-blackboard performances, word-salad dialogue and ugly visuals all seemingly in search of a story that isn’t there. 1/5

Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph (UK) – Aubrey Plaza, whose character is a trashy TV news personality called Wow Platinum, has the measure of the thing better than anyone bar Coppola himself: she’s fantastic… 4/5

Raphael Abraham, Financial Times – Perhaps the kindest thing one can say about Megalopolis is that it will probably remain largely unwatched and be quickly forgotten. 1/5

Jo-Ann Titmarsh, London Evening Standard – Imagine a Paco Rabanne perfume ad mixed with the voyeuristic lady-gazing of a Sorrentino film and that will give you a whiff of Francis Ford Coppola’s latest – and almost definitely last – film. 1/5

Geoffrey Macnab, Independent (UK) – Ultimately, this isn’t the car crash it could have been. It is, though, deeply flawed and very eccentric. 3/5

Donald Clarke, Irish Times – Seconds, minutes, hours and (it seems, anyway) days assert their presence unforgivingly as the film staggers its way to nowhere worth going. If you don’t enjoy the first five minutes than gird your loins. It’s like that all the way through. 1/5

Shubhra Gupta, The Indian Express – In parts, very occasionally, you get the kind of soaring Shakespearean feeling that the very best dramas have, and even though no one actually spouts this famous speech, you can feel the director’s exhortation to friends-Romans-countrymen.

Nicholas Barber, BBC.com – It's like listening to someone tell you about the crazy dream they had last night – and they don't stop talking for well over two hours. 1/5

Maureen Lee Lenker, Entertainment Weekly – The film may be set in the future but its views on sexuality, men and women, and power are hopelessly stuck in the past. F

Stephanie Zacharek, TIME Magazine – What does it all mean? It’s clear that Coppola is feeling some anguish over the way certain honorable American ideals—essentially human ideals—have become distorted and warped, maybe even discarded altogether.

Justin Chang, New Yorker – After a thirteen-year absence, a great American director returns with an ambitious vision of a city—and a world—in need of renewal.

Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair – This is the junkiest of junk-drawer movies, a slapped together hash of Coppola’s many disparate inspirations. What really tanks the movie, though, is its datedness.

David Fear, Rolling Stone – It is exactly the movie that Coppola set out to make — uncompromising, uniquely intellectual, unabashedly romantic, broadly satirical yet remarkably sincere about wanting not just brave new worlds but better ones.

Bilge Ebiri, New York Magazine/Vulture – Megalopolis might be the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy every single batshit second of it.

Radheyan Simonpillai, Zoomer – There’s a touch of self-portraiture in Megalopolis, the extent in which Cesar’s ambition and dreams mirror Coppola’s own romantic pursuits.

Tim Grierson, Screen International – Megalopolis is stymied by arbitrary plotting and numbing excess. One can feel Coppola’s anger and sorrow over the decline of his beloved America, but narrative coherence is far less apparent.

Anna Smith, Total Film – It is hard to share [Francis Ford Coppola's] reverence for his narrative when the dialogue is mannered to the point of distraction, and each performance seems to come from a different movie. 2/5

David Jenkins, Little White Lies – A work of art that actively practices what it preaches, a celebration of unfettered creativity and farsightedness that offers a volcanic fusion of hand-crafted neo-classicism while running through a script of toe-tapping word-jazz.

Esther Zuckerman, The Daily Beast – Megalopolis is stilted, earnest, over the top, CGI ridden, and utterly a mess. And yet you can picture a crowded theater shouting along with Jon Voight as he says in one key scene, “What do you make of this boner I got?”

David Ehrlich, indieWire – With Megalopolis, [Francis Ford Coppola] crams 85 years worth of artistic reverence and romantic love into a clunky, garish, and transcendently sincere manifesto about the role of an artist at the end of an empire. B+

Sam Adams, Slate – Megalopolis is the product of man who has tried to put everything he knows or thinks into one climactic work. And whether or not it all fits, it’s exhilarating to watch him try.

Hoai-Tran Bui, Inverse – A bunch of ideas smashed together into a garish, baffling, dazzling, kind of atrocious, and totally audacious rejection of the cinematic form. It should never have been made. And yet, now that it has, we should be so grateful that it exists.

Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com – "Megalopolis" is exactly what movies can and should be—unflinchingly earnest.

Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com – Clearly, that’s an enticing vision, but some people will walk out of this film enraged by its inconsistencies. 3/4

SYNOPSIS:

Megalopolis is a Roman Epic fable set in an imagined Modern America. The City of New Rome must change, causing conflict between Cesar Catilina, a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero, who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare. Torn between them is socialite Julia Cicero, the mayor’s daughter, whose love for Cesar has divided her loyalties, forcing her to discover what she truly believes humanity deserves.

CAST:

• Adam Driver as Cesar Catilina
• Giancarlo Esposito as Mayor Franklyn Cicero
• Nathalie Emmanuel as Julia Cicero
• Aubrey Plaza as Wow Platinum
• Shia LaBeouf as Clodio Pulcher
• Jon Voight as Hamilton Crassus III
• Jason Schwartzman as Jason Zanderz
• Talia Shire as Constance Crassus Catilina
• Grace VanderWaal as Vesta Sweetwater
• Laurence Fishburne as Fundi Romaine
• Kathryn Hunter as Teresa Cicero
• Dustin Hoffman as Nush "The Fixer" Berman

DIRECTED BY: Francis Ford Coppola

WRITTEN BY: Francis Ford Coppola

PRODUCED BY: Francis Ford Coppola, Barry Hirsch, Fred Roos, Michael Bederman

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Anahid Nazarian

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Mihai Mălaimare Jr.

PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Bradley Rubin, Beth Mickle

VISUAL CONCEPT DESIGNER: Dean Sherriff

EDITED BY: Cam McLauchlin, Glen Scantlebury

MUSIC BY: Osvaldo Golijov

COSTUME DESIGNER: Milena Canonero

VFX SUPERVISOR: Jesse James Chisholm

SECOND UNIT DIRECTOR: Roman Coppola

CASTING BY: Courtney Bright, Nicole Daniels

RUNTIME: 138 Minutes

RELEASE DATE: September 27, 2024