Some $120m and 40 years later, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is finally ready for the jury’s verdict.

Only a stone wouldn’t wish it well on its way but this one may not even make it out of the harbour-mouth.

Critics are already doing somersaults to avoid defecating outright on this magnum opus, but most — including this one — revert to the same two words. Why, Francis?

How could a filmmaker with the sorcerer's touch of Coppola make such a convoluted, out of touch, dramatically and ideologically inept bore fest?

Megalopolis feels more akin to a big-budget soap opera than anything else, with dialogue so contrived and unnatural that it's hard to believe any actor could enjoy reading it off the page.

Some do their best with what they are given. Adam Driver is committed as always but his character is almost impossible to root for. A tortured genius with a tragic past but there’s nothing beneath the surface, much like the film itself.

Nathalie Emmanuel is one of the very few redeeming qualities in the film, doing her absolute best with some of the worst dialogue imaginable. She’s really the emotional core of the film even if her character is criminally underwritten.

Coppola tried making a film about everything — politics, architecture, physics, history, love, power — and in the end made a film about nothing.

The Italian-American simply had too much time, in the end adding so many different condiments to the mix that it completely and utterly spoiled the dish. In other words, it's been 40-plus years of fidgeting and overthinking, and all for this mega letdown.

For 2024, the green screen and CGI are amateurish at best. The production design is nauseatingly inconsistent, which is ironic when you consider the film’s protagonist is an architect.

Props have to be given to those who edited the most recent trailer for the film, they somehow made it look like remotely interesting by placing all of the most interesting images and lines of dialogue into its 1-minute, 40-second duration. What a hoax.

At least Coppola will get another crack at it. The director revealed to the press at Cannes on Friday that he was already writing another film. He may have a chance to redeem himself after all.

It’s more than understandable that this is a film Coppola needed to get off his chest. At one stage along the line it must have become a need and not a want for him to get Megalopolis released. But, in all honesty, some things are just better left in the can, to be wondered about for eternity.

1/5