'Megalopolis' is mega bad: Francis Ford Coppola's latest amounts to overindulgent mess

After nearly 40 years of production hell, Francis Ford Coppola has finally released his self-financed futuristic Roman epic: "Megalopolis." Coppola has been hailed as one of the greatest directors of all time, directing masterpieces like "The Godfather" and "Apocalypse Now," so you would expect that anticipation for his newest movie would be high ... but it's not.

Controversy has surrounded the film's release, from allegations of sexual harassment leveled at the director, AI-generated quotes featured in the trailers and the entire VFX team allegedly getting fired, culminating in a very divisive response at the Cannes Film Festival.

Coppola had to cough up millions of his own funds to get the movie made, but even then, the film couldn't find a distributor for months until Lionsgate stepped in. But disregarding all these extremely alarming red flags, how does the film stand on its own?

Well, to put it mildly, this movie is awful. "Megalopolis" is an overindulgent mess with almost no hint of the subtlety and balance that Coppola's previous films relied on. The film feels like a haphazard concoction of LSD and propofol, an endurance test to see if you can stomach the whole thing without walking out.

The film follows Coppola's self-insert protagonist, Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), who's trying to build his ideal utopia, "Megalopolis," but has to contend with Mayor Franklin Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito) and his cousin, Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf), who attempt to foil his plans. During all this, Catilina gets romantically entangled with the mayor's daughter, Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), who's secretly trying to figure out what happened to Catilina's dead wife.

The film is heavily dragged down by a plethora of side characters and subplots that go nowhere. Aubrey Plaza, Jon Voight, Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Fishburne are all in this movie to do nothing but chew up the scenery. Fishburne, specifically, gets completely shafted, forced to yap about "profound" gibberish during his completely pointless narration. Coppola shoves all these random ideas into an incoherent cacophony and somehow expects the viewer to keep track and stay on board.

Overall, the acting is light years behind the competition, primarily due to Coppola's shockingly bad direction and absurd dialogue.

Lines like, "You think one year of medical school entitles you to plow through the riches of my Emersonian mind?", feel so monumentally stupid that they turn this movie into an unintentional joke.

On top of that, there are so many cringe-worthy scenes in this film, particularly one with Plaza and LaBeouf, that'll make you second-guess stepping into the theater.

Not to mention that despite this film's $120 million budget, it looks like a student film. The visual effects are wildly inconsistent, featuring some shots that look jaw-droppingly beautiful and others that look like a child's first Blender project.

The compositing, in particular, is unforgivably bad and the overreliance on a green screen gives the city of New Rome almost no permanence. The titular "Megalopolis" that Catilina spends the entire film building also looks like an AI-generated nightmare, drenched in a yellowish tint that makes the whole thing look hideous.

But, the biggest problem with this film is easily the manic and migraine-inducing editing. The film's storytelling relies on these godforsaken montages that split the frame into thirds and overwhelm you with incongruous visuals. For every genuinely interesting shot, there's 50 other shots there to send you into sensory overload. Somehow, they all play out within the span of five minutes.

"Megalopolis" positions itself as this grand epic rivaling Coppola's prior work but winds up being the most embarrassing movie of the year. If anything, this movie should be seen by any prospective film student, because if one of the best directors of all time can produce this drivel, you might as well give it a shot.