The reviews for Francis Ford Coppola’s epic science fiction film Megalopolis have arrived, and they add up to underscore a wide-ranging response. Coppola spent decades developing the movie and reportedly spent $120 million of his own money on it. Megalopolis premiered at the 77th Annual Cannes Film Festival on May 16, 2024, before releasing in the US theaters on September 27, 2024, by Lionsgate.
Megalopolis reviews range from positive to highly negative
The critical response to Megalopolis is significantly divisive, ranging from positive to highly negative. While some critics praised the film’s audacity, others called it “pretentious.”
Manohla Dargis of The New York Times gave Megalopolis a positive review. “Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is a bursting-at-the-seams hallucination of a movie — it’s wonderfully out-there,” she wrote. “At once a melancholic lament and futuristic fantasy, it invokes different epochs and overflows with entrancing, at times confounding images and ideas that have been playing in my head since I first saw the movie in May at the Cannes Film Festival.”
The Los Angeles Times’ Joshua Rothkopf urges the audience to discard “the understandable dream of Coppola returning with another masterpiece” and enjoy what Megalopolis has in its offering, including the performances of its cast.
Meanwhile, Nick Schager of The Daily Beast referred to Megalopolis as a “daring saga,” before adding the movie “boasts far more moments that stumble than soar. It’s a mess that can be admired—but a mess, nonetheless.”
According to Linda Marric of The Sun (UK), Megalopolis may not be the “most pretentious film ever,” but it is a “contender.” She added, “Even with a star-studded secondary cast featuring Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf and Jon Voight, this vanity project is sure to leave viewers scratching their heads and more than a bit bored.”
Megalopolis has accumulated a 51% approval rating on the review aggregating website Rotten Tomatoes after 150 reviews. Meanwhile, it has earned a score of 56 out of 100 on Metacritic. The website uses a weighted average to rate a movie or TV series, after 50 reviews, denoting a mixed or average response. It now remains unseen how the audience responds to the movie.