NEW YORK (OSV News) — The insensate botch of “Megalopolis” (Lionsgate) is structured like a fable, pitting the self-doubt and moral descent of a tortured modern-day architect against the debauchery of ancient Rome.
Set in a dystopian version of New York City called New Rome City, director-writer Francis Ford Coppola maintains all the tropes of “Quo Vadis” and other sword-and-sandals epics of old. A cheering elite, hollowed out by greed and base lusts, enjoy a gladiator fight, a chariot race, and even auction off a pop star Vestal virgin. Vesta Sweetwater (Grace VanderWaal).
Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) is the conflicted architect. He heads the city’s Design Authority and for a reason never explained, has the ability to stop time for a few seconds. He’s also drunk or high most of the time and prone to allegorical visions. For instance, civic statuary representing justice and the old moral order collapse as he is driven by.
With Megalon, a new synthetic building material, Cesar has a plan to rebuild the city into an accessible utopia for the masses. This pits him against Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who is entrenched with the city’s status quo, who bray that only reinforced concrete is the proper building material.
Cesar has many romantic entanglements, including the mayor’s daughter Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel), who provides him with a sort-of conscience, and a corrupt financial journalist, the wisecracking Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), who finally gives up on him to marry the uber-wealthy banker Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight).
Crassus is prone to dime-store profundities such as musing that the best part of being rich is “You can scare people,” and “Green is but a word jealous men give to the ambitious.”
Cesar also has a driver, Fundi Romaine, (Laurence Fishburne) who sometimes narrates with sonorous wisdom such as “Why does an empire die? There comes a time when the people no longer believe in it. Then it will die.”
Coppola has created self-indulgent bloat and spectacle in place of a coherent plot with a cogent message — unless the message was to be, “Let’s torture the audience.”
The film contains adult themes, a scene with a non-marital sexual encounter, and fleeting rough language and profanities. The OSV News classification is L — limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. The Motion Picture Association rating is R — restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
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