Megalopolis
Megalopolis (2024) Review
What is Megalopolis about?
“Megalopolis” is a sci-fi drama that follows the story of Cesar Catalina, an architect in the City of New Rome who aspires to build the city into a utopia. The movie is directed by Francis Ford Coppola who is also known for his Godfather films. As I previously mentioned, the movie follows the story of Cesar Catalina, played by Adam Driver, who is trying to build the city into an idealistic future. Catalina struggles to achieve these goals as the city’s mayor, Mayor Franklyn Cicero, played by Giancarlo Esposito, is trying to keep the city as regressive as possible. The film also follows the story of the mayor’s daughter, Julia Cicero, played by Nathalie Emmanuel, whose love for Cesar has affected her relationship with her father. The film was released on September 27th, 2024, and has a running time of 2 hours and 18 minutes.
My Review
Last night I finally got to watch Megalopolis after waiting for it to come out since it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Sadly I wasn’t able to watch it in theaters, but I got to watch it at home after a bit of a long wait. When it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, reviews were all over the place. I’d like to say that when I say this I’m referencing reviews and ratings on Letterboxd, however, after it was released in theaters, the film received many negative reviews. After watching the movie, I can confirm that this movie is quite terrible and those reviews were right. To be quite frank, I have no clue what Francis Ford Coppola was trying to do when making this film, it was definitely a vision but it had an awful execution.
The plot of the movie is just a mess, it started well and I will admit, the idea was pretty interesting but like I said, the execution was terrible. The movie’s storyline seemed okay at first, but soon enough it turned into a whole mess and the story was going to all different places. The plot didn’t have a straight or direct plot, as it felt like it shifted into many of these at many points in the movie, to be completely honest, I had no idea what was happening for at least half of the movie because of this problem. In relation to the acting, I felt like it was okay but it wasn’t fantastic, at moments it felt quite bad despite the movie having a great cast. I love Adam Driver and he was fine in the movie, but his performance didn’t blow me away and it was quite mediocre. The cinematography of the movie felt okay at times as some scenes had beautiful scenery and contained some amazing shots.
To finish this review, I can confidently say I wouldn’t recommend this movie to anybody because it was simply a hot mess. I feel like there will be people who will enjoy the movie and find Coppola’s vision fantastic. I didn’t have a great time watching the movie, even going to laugh at it at times due to the mess. I forgot to add that this movie’s runtime isn’t bad at all, but the pacing was so bad I felt like I was sitting down watching this mess for like four hours. I ended up giving the movie 1.5 stars out of 5 stars, because I feel like you can find some redeeming qualities, but once again, it was an absolute mess. I would also like to add this review from Letterboxd which I found funny as it summarized the movie quite well. https://letterboxd.com/jashanramjee/film/megalopolis-2024/ Thank you for joining me in my review of “Megalopolis” and I’ll see you next time!
- Dani