Nathalie Emmanuel in Megalopolis [2024 Lionsgate]

MEGALOPOLIS
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Certificate: 12a
☆

IT’S not an overly original thought to compare the United States to Ancient Rome. Historian Edward Gibbon was laying out the reasons the empire crumbled 244 years ago, and it’s a well-worn historic trope that the decadence of Rome played a large part in its downfall.

Historians love to scratch their chins, narrow their eyes and say: look at the US now. We’ve seen all this before.

That the legendary director Francis Ford Coppola, a brilliant commentator whose films have been an eye-opening prism to understand the nation, has decided it is time to create a Roman epic based on the America he sees today should, by rights, be both a fantastic watch and biting piece of politics.

What a monstrous shame it is that Megalopolis is a mega-flop-olis.

We meet Caesar (Adam Driver), an architect given carte blanche to demolish waves of New York blocks and build a new Jerusalem. He has invented Megalon, a material that is alive and will grow alongside the people living within its houses.

He is up against Mayor Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who doesn’t buy his ideas.

A cast of side distractions include the ludicrously named Wow Platinum (Aubrey Plaza), a TV reporter covering economics and determined to feather her nest. She is sleeping with Caesar before swapping him for his uncle Crassus (Jon Voight). Then there is more chicanery with a character called Clodio (Shia LaBeouf), who is plotting to inherit Crassus’s vast wealth.

There is a backdrop of unoriginal bacchanalia – Coppola’s ideas of what over-the-top indulgence looks like is based on a neo-Roman fashion style worn by women he may have met at Studio 54 in the 1970s.

Julia (Nathalie Emmanuel) is a lead character, but Coppola’s women are either furniture or have no real characteristics for us to make a judgment on whether we are yeah or nay.

Then there is the odd dialogue. Driver enters by reciting Hamlet’s soliloquy, for no apparent reason apart from he does it well. Other conversations dip in between cod Shakespeare, mangled future-speak mixed with Latin, and plenty of thespian indulgence in delivery.

From ropey acting and a confusing plot, to low-rent sets and uneven effects, this is not good storytelling.

It is said Coppola took about four decades to get it off the ground. Perhaps that’s why it’s so bloated. Coppola is fully on point with the similarities between the US and Rome, but shows it in a decadently messy way.