The worst film I have seen in many years and not even in an enjoyable way. I understand why Coppola struggled to get this made and eventually had to fund it himself. What I can't understand is how he convinced a reasonably starry cast and crew to participate in this bilge.

The acting is ridiculously mannered (Adam Driver swooping his neo-Roman cape around early on should have been a warning). It presumably was leaning in to some kind of self-parody - at least some of the actors may have thought that was what they were doing - but I shouldn't have to guess whether it was deliberate.

Visuals: If good enough they might have been reward enough for me - I went to see it in IMAX for that reason) were a huge disappointment for a director with his talent - perhaps a "mere" $120m is no longer enough to afford decent CGI?

Plot: I lost an hour and a half of my life waiting for the movie to finish clearing its throat and start building towards something, but I gradually realized that moment would never come despite an intrusive, plodding narration trying to explain the plot. It gestures towards grand themes (Imperial Rome and the fall of the American empire, moral decay and show biz spectacle in politics, the competition between pragmatism and utopian planning/thinking...) But when I say it was gesturing... it was really flailing its metaphorical arms around and shouting - nothing seemed to tie the strands together, and I lost interest in trying to see what he was up to.

Ick: To the extent I did "understand" the themes, I found some of them quite disturbing. If Adam Driver/Cesar is supposed to be a visionary hero with big ideas for the city, based in part on Robert Moses who rebuilt New York... Robert Moses was a terrible human being. Shia LaBeof's cartoonish villain is clearly meant to be some kind of projection of moral corruption... so having him be in drag much of the movie seems wildly inappropriate for a contemporary audience. Ordinary New Yorkers have no real place in the movie and tend to be treated as more or less a baying mob - in keeping with the caricatured Roman theme but fundamentally anti-democratic. Giancarlo Esposito, the newly-elected mayor who represents democratic governance in this fable, is a cartoonish demagogue.

At a meta-level - I went to an IMAX screening a few days into the theatrical run. when booking earlier in the day, there appeared to be about a dozen or so people who also had tickets... but when a friend and I arrived, it seemed most of those people didn't bother to turn up - wisely, as it turned out. My friend, who was tired, actually managed to doze off intermittently, despite the noise and spectacle unfolding on the big screen. We walked out before the end - something I generally hesitate to do but seemed the only reasonable response. There were a few points earlier in the plot when characters said things like "this makes no sense" when I should have taken their lead.

In retrospect, if he had stopped working after Apocalypse Now (one of my favourite films) and The Godfather I and II, the world would not have missed much, and he could be remembered as a genius. Instead, this is a terrible end to a long decline from greatness. Avoid.