MEGALOPOLIS was always going to be flawed, but after three decades of waiting it’s frankly exasperating just how basic and ill-conceived Francis Ford Coppola’s passion project has turned out to be. In a stale and surface-level satirical conceit, Coppola asks, what if future USA becomes a literal Roman Empire sewing its own seeds of destruction? Genius architect Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver) plans a utopian city while battling corrupt politicians and rot set into an excessive society at large. Yes, even if the whole American Empire collapsing is becoming true it was still really clumsily executed. The dialogue is laboured when it’s not lifting from Shakespeare, the performances range from dull (Driver, Giancarlo Esposito) to engagingly weird (Aubrey Plaza) to unintentionally funny (Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight) and the whole thing has an off-putting, unreal sheen. Not the high that Coppola would have wanted to go out on, but perhaps the ultimate lesson in artistic hubris. SSP