"Coppola has been unable to find a studio buyer for the movie and it’s clear why: 'Megalopolis' is likely to confuse and divide mainstream audiences."

"No two actors in this movie are on the same page about how to perform it, and the result is a mishmash of acting styles and big, misbegotten choices that had some journalists at the festival giggling in disbelief. The dialogue is either bluntly declarative or totally impenetrable, and Coppola often interrupts the action with shots of featured extras so prolonged that you can tell with certainty that you’re looking at one of the filmmaker’s relatives."

From "Francis Ford Coppola’s 'Megalopolis': What to Know After its premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, we can answer your many questions, though some details still puzzle us" (NYT).

ADDED: From "Megalopolis Is a Work of Absolute Madness" (NY Magazine):

There is nothing in Megalopolis that feels like something out of a “normal” movie. It has its own logic and cadence and vernacular. The characters speak in archaic phrases and words, mixing shards of Shakespeare, Ovid, and at one point straight-up Latin. Some characters speak in rhyme, others just in high-minded prose that feels like maybe it should be in verse. At one point, Adam Driver does the entire “To be or not to be” soliloquy from Hamlet. Why? I’m not exactly sure. But it sure sounds good....

Watch out for mainstream disaffection based on the fact that this movie contains traces of Ayn Rand:

Coppola, who once planned on adapting Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, clearly sides with the [architect] dreamer, but [the Adam Driver character] Cesar is an imperfect vessel. He possesses tremendous powers — in the film’s bravura opening sequence, we see him stop time as he leans precariously off the Chrysler Building — but he’s also an egomaniac, absorbed in his own brilliance and unable to compromise or care for those below him....

AND: From The Guardian:

There are moments when Coppola appears to be channelling Fritz Lang’s Metropolis or Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, and its bland, doughy rhetoric about humanity’s potential seems to come from the New Deal era, or even earlier. I found myself thinking of Chaplin’s final speech in The Great Dictator. But the disco-dancing last days of decadent Rome simply feel dated.

LitHub:

I note that Coppola seems especially excited by the concept of a matriarchy. And I pray that Ayn Rand isn’t really in the mix.

Rachel Handler at Vulture: 

Something about ancient Rome and empires falling and reading too much Ayn Rand and how we need to have hope for America or the teen pregnancy rate will skyrocket and people will not have fun at bacchanalian parties at Madison Square Garden anymore. Coppola took inspiration from “everything I had ever read or learned about” to write this, according to the press notes, which comes across. Coppola rightly recognizes that America is in free-fall and something needs to be done, but unfortunately he thinks that “something” is to hand it over to a nice billionaire oligarch who definitely has our best interests at heart, haha, I’m scared, I really hope nobody takes this movie seriously....

Ha ha. Now, you might want to take the movie seriously. I know you. You're one of those guys who thinks about the Roman Empire every day, aren't you? No? Me neither.