Megalopolis (2024) Depending on your critical viewpoints, you can approach this film in multiple ways.
You many toss it off as another sad case of a director who didn't heed that well worn phrase, 'be careful what you wish for. After years of toying with the idea of making their elusive 'dream project, a few directors actually get a chance to make that happen...... and then have their hearts broken and souls crushed when the film of their dreams ends up critically shredded, ridiculed and most cruelly......ignored.
Or you might simply ignore the film's tortured origin story and dispassionately view it as just another new movie that opened last week.....reviewing it on its immediate merits without considering the director labored on it for his entire adult life.
As for BQ, a lifelong cinephile, we can't help taking in "Megalopolis" as what its creator Francis Ford Coppola intended....a total summing up his lifetime of filmmaking creativity. Whatever's been percolating in Coppola's mind since he started making movies in 1956, it's all on display here - the imagination, visual dreams, the art and science of film and finally, after a long life richly lived, his own worldview and future hopes.
It's the very definition of a dream project, sure enough, in that it's half fantasy and half gritty reality mixed at high speed in a blender. Like an actual waking dream, most of it looks impossibly senseless, with characters and settings warped into extravagant directions.
But let's get down to the basic questions. Is it any good? Is it watchable or a complete waste of time? Interesting? Fascinating? Boring? Maddening? Nothing more than director's inflated ego trip? Or maybe a masterpiece....of sorts? Or a total disasterpiece?
Our basic answer: All of the above.
Let's just say. It's an experience that washes over you. There's a treasure trove of stuff to enjoy, but also just as much stuff to make you roll your eyes and groan. This kind of fearless, over-the-top, wildly ambitious filmmaking that that hasn't been seen in decades.....because very few directors would take such risks that could make them look foolish, out-of-touch, and nothing more than a fake poseur with a bloated opinion of their own artistic worth.
Francis Ford Coppola took all those risks. He swung for the fences, crafted an epic story that ultimately articulates how he sees the world as it is and how he'd like it to be. And put it all up on the screen for everyone to see.
From the dismal box office numbers, the mass audiences that assembled for "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" and "Deadpool & Woverine" stayed away in droves. And those who did show up out of curiosity turned their noses up.
As for us? Some of it we reveled in, some of it we couldn't stand, some of it plain wore us out. Our overall sense of it: if Coppola had only organized his ideas and disciplined his storytelling, if he'd paid as much attention to potential audiences as he did to the messy collision of visions in his head........who knows?
Since Coppola went way out on limb to make 'Megalopolis', then we'll go out on limb in this prediction: Maybe decades from now, critics and audiences will re-discover this film, unearth it from obscurity and give it a whole new evaluation from the one you're reading here.
Will they be right? Promise you'll hold a seance to let me know........
Anything's possible. 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)....(for no other reason than you're not likely to ever see a filmmaker try a movie like this in your lifetime....)
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