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Comment by currymj | Hacker News Reader

in my theater the audience was laughing uproariously at a lot of it (some but not all intended to be funny). then everyone applauded at the end.

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I had this notion that all the hip comedy writers in Hollywood should write jokes to make this he next Rocky Horror/Room. Do the old man a favor and help him make at least some of the money back. edit - I am seeing this is a common theme in the comments - there is something joyful about an earnest(?) movie that swings and misses.

It's too long. Rocky Horror is 100 minutes, Megalopolis is 138 minutes. The bad movies that endure have shorter runtimes.

I remember around the time of Army of Darkness Sam Raimi said his ideal running time for his pictures was 65 minutes -- he disliked the idea of blowing somebody's day over a silly movie.

Rocky Horror wasn’t bad, though. Campy, sure. But in many ways it was a masterpiece.

In my theater people just left, and I barely made it through the film. It was rather bad I should say.

My theater people were just bored.

i can understand walking out due to disgust or confusion but “bored” is hard for me to comprehend.

Personally I didn't find the movie boring overall, but there were around five too many romance scenes between Driver and Emmanuel's characters that didn't seem to move anything forward, the kind of scenes that usually get cut for redundancy.

Old man wants to put his main actress in a sheer top, and have his director-analogue character fondle her. That's how I read those scenes. I felt like every single thing Nathalie Emmanuel did in that film was for the gratification of Coppola. He even put Nathalie in a lesbian relationship at the beginning!

Idk, I was tempted to walk out as I started to feel I had better things to do with my time but I stayed in hopes of something crazy happening and was mostly rewarded for my patience as there are a couple bonkers scenes near the end.

Even reading about it seems to bore me. I get to that "New Rome, Capital of the 'American Republic'" bit everytime and I can just feel the wave of "meh" wash over me. Oh great, someone thinks there's a lot of explore here. Comparing America to Rome... how original. Yes, isn't America really, in many ways, a modern Roman Republic? The immense power, and how that power corrupts, and how a republic can quickly turn to empire and, like all empires, collapse. Hum, yes, very clever... I say to myseld as I shudder at the thought of having so sit through three hours of that narrative.

Worst of all, I know that deep down i'm desparate to appear witty and cultured and knowi f i did go see it I'd make myself feel guilty If i didn't enjoy it and come out the theatre somehow thinking i'd witnessed a true masterpiece. I'd have to keep quiet and hide my joy at it being over as I muscle my way out the vacating crowds only to be occasionally stopped by someone needing to tell me how great it is to go see something that isn't just another Marvel superhero crap. "Yes, yes, they are mindless aren't they..." i mutter, not even sure what I believe anymore. My mind trying to recover for near suicidal leaves of pretentious crap.

You wrote a pretentious post to say the movie was pretentious.

Maybe Coppola made an obvious movie to say a thing is obvious?

Or maybe not, and neither one of you was being clever.

I liked his review. The way he wrote reminds of a funny review for Inception.

The Rome part might seem stale, but you should know that he's repeatedly spoken about how the works of Graeber and Wengrow are his biggest influences. It's not a simple Neo Rome story or just Ayn Rand. It's certainly an unexpected and interesting inspiration and an optimistic one.

This is without commenting on how well it translated to screen (I saw it on IMAX for a NYFF partner screening with Q&A)

Is this post about the movie or about you?

What a strongly negative review from someone who hasn’t seen it. A negative review of the very idea of it.

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