by Mark Demetrius
Worth: $8.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Adam Driver, Giancarlo Esposito, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza
Intro:
... bafflingly bad ...
The idea of modern-day America resembling the declining ancient Rome was a tired cliche well before this film saw the light of day. Now, it’s an utterly exhausted one. It’s quite sad really, because the project began as a passionate goal for Francis Ford Coppola, and it’s ended as an artistic failure – and not even the noble kind.
At the core of this excruciating saga is a battle of wills between the ruthless and reactionary Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), mayor of the U.S. city New Rome, and the idealistic architect and visionary Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver). Catilina falls for Cicero’s daughter (Nathalie Emmanuel), and machinations and intrigue ensue. Beyond that, this is just a cobbled-together mishmash of pseudo-profound one-liners and unfunny quips, gimmicky special effects and general multi-million-dollar stylistic overkill. It’s gaudy and pretentious, and the acting – even in the cameos from veteran stars like Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight who should have known and been better – is almost uniformly wooden. Not one character is engaging.
There are a couple of interesting quotes from Marcus Aurelius; the rest of the ‘bon mots’ are at the level of “Only those in a nightmare are capable of praising the moonlight”. And, as for the comedic element, what can you say about a movie where the funniest line is someone shouting “You shut the fuck up!” through a megaphone?
Megalopolis is so bafflingly bad that it raises a lot of questions. The chief one is, ‘how on earth could a director with Coppola’s illustrious track record get it all so wrong?’
