Review: MegaFLOPolis    

Hailed as one of the most divisive movies ever made, legendary director Francis Ford Coppola’s newest flick, Megalopolis, has had some very polarizing effects on audiences. I heard about this movie a while back, and I’ve wanted to see it for some time. Now that I’ve seen it, what’s the verdict?

I’ll keep this as spoiler free as I can, but some spoilers may be ahead. Let’s start with the good. The visuals are stunning. This movie is a spectacle, with psychedelic elements throughout, and some wonderful CGI work, costumes, and choreography. The score is also excellent. 

While this movie is quite the sight, that’s about all it is. The cast is loaded, Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Aubrey Plaza, and Dustin Hoffman to name a few, and they all fall well short of expectations. 

Adam Driver does a lot of Adam Driver acting tropes, including lots of shouting and flat dialogue. 

Esposito as Mayor Cicero is okay, but pretty boring for most of the movie, a rather unutilized character. 

Plaza’s talent as an actress is wasted as a character that is used to highlight the sexual objectification of women, which is a large pitfall for this movie. 

Hoffman is also unfortunately relegated to the elder statesman with children fighting over his money. Another, rather waste of a character for a largely undeveloped plot point which is unfortunately most plot points in this movie.

What can I say about the plot overall? Not a lot to be honest, as I didn’t quite understand what Coppola was going for. The theme of a power struggle is quite present, but not done very well, as they don’t really grapple for power, just sort of pinch each other. 

There is also some political messaging, which seems oddly pro-dictator to me, Hitler specifically, which I found fairly off putting and extremely unnecessary. The plot goes several directions, and every single one is just so half baked and directionless.

A few more negatives include the portrayal of women in this movie. They are portrayed as nothing more than objects, and are so oversexualized that it made me cringe at several points. 

There is a heavy emphasis on Roman themes throughout, specifically Caesar references. The city in the movie is even called New Rome, even though it is very obviously just New York City with some Latin scriptures and stylised architecture CG’d onto some buildings.

The references go even further, with the main characters being named Cicero and Caesar, but the theme of things being half baked goes even further, with the costumes being vaguely generically Roman, some Latin sprinkled throughout the movie, and the city being a half assed attempt at creating something original and exciting.

The movie is also marketed as Megalopolis, A Fable, but a fable is meant to teach you something. This movie should be taken as a lesson of what not to do when trying to make a blockbuster.

This last complaint is more personal, but Coppola completely wasted Laurence Fishburne. He’s relegated to a butler with a bit of narration. This movie could have definitely used some of his charisma and overall talent.

Overall, Megalopolis is a mess. 

The plot is all over the place, ultimately going nowhere. 

The Roman ideas are good on paper, but so poorly executed that they don’t actually tie into the movie at all besides the city being called New Rome. 

The extreme objectification of the female characters made me want to curl into a ball and cry. On top of that pile of garbage, the weirdly pro dictator, even bordering on pro nazi themes that are so uncalled for and random. It also makes Coppola look pretty bad.

Overall, my rating is a 1.5/5, 1 of those points for visuals, and the rest for a couple interesting ideas like the whole Roman bit, however, I can only give it 1.5 points since it’s so half baked and hodgepodge.