Film Review: Megalopolis Brings Endearing - But Messy - Utopian Vision To Life
For decades, Francis Ford Coppola – known for delivering cinematic classics like The Godfather I and II, Apocalypse Now, and The Conversation – has been teasing Megalopolis and its promises. He sold his winery in Napa to get the necessary funding, financing the entire film himself. Very little was known about the film, other than who was cast in it, and that it had to do with civilization. While Megalopolis does fall flat many times, there are moments of greatness streaked throughout its two-hour run time, a reminder of Coppola’s abilities as a gifted storyteller. It’s far from his best film, but its ambitious scope and swing-at-the-fences attitude is enough to warrant a recommendation.
There is a great deal of plot, so let me try to summarize this as best as I can. Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver) is an architect living in New Rome (think New York but, well…Rome). He’s won the Noble Prize for his discovery of a new building material, Megalon, that never erodes over time. He plans to use this new element to build a city called (you guessed it!) Megalopolis, a utopian society that will solve the problems plaguing New Rome. Oh, and he has the ability to stop time, which no one else knows about.
While Catalina wants the city to succeed, others around him have differing motivations. Aubrey Plaza’s Wow Platinum (no, really) wants nothing but power and money. She leaves her mistress-ship with Cesar to marry his uncle, Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight), better known as the world’s richest man. District Attorney Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) wants Cesar in jail, which Cicero’s daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) falls in love with him instead.
There are many ambitious ideas here, but it doesn’t always work. One moment, Driver is delivering Hamlet’s entire “To Be or Not To Be” speech. Only moments later, some of the most ridiculous dialogue ever committed to paper and then delivered on film is heard. Megalopolis jumps all over the place, and at any given time, you can have five different actors on screen all acting like they’re in different films.
Yet, despite this mess, there is something to admire here. I am okay with watching a director take a massive swing at the fences and not hit it out of the park. I would rather watch that than the same formulaic movie do the exact same thing that every other film does and execute it poorly. There are moments of Megalopolis that are endearing, but there are too many structural and performance issues that prevent this from being one of the greats. With all of that being said, I would be lying if I said that I didn’t have fun watching it.
Release Date: September 27th, 2024
Rated: R (for sexual content, nudity, drug use, language, and some violence)
Running Time: 2 hours, 18 minutes
Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola
Written by: Francis Ford Coppola
Produced by: Francis Ford Coppola, Barry Hirsch, Fred Roos, Michael Bederman
Starring: Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Kathryn Hunter, Dustin Hoffman
