Even if the negative pull quotes from notable reviewers Vincent Canby, Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael and Andrew Sarris among them featured in the trailer were truthful critiques of the filmmaker’s classics “The Godfather” (1972), “Apocalypse Now” (1979) and “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992) doesn’t mean everyone agreed on their assessments.
I don’t listen to the film critics. Not once in my over five decades on this planet had I ever read a review hoping the supposed know-it-all reviewers would like a movie I was planning to see.
What attracted me to the reviews from such renowned writers Richard Corliss (1944-2015) of Time, Roger Ebert (1942-2013) of the Chicago Sun-Times, Pauline Kael (1919-2001) of The New Yorker and Bruce Williamson (1927-1998) of Playboy (there was more to the risqué periodical than just the pretty pictures) was their unique writing styles.
Same reason why today the only two critics I read on occasion are Stephanie Zacharek of Time and contributor Ross Douthat of National Review.
If I had paid attention to the vitriol the critics spewed out in their columns about the following the past five decades, I’d have avoided "1941" (1979), the Airport disaster movies of the 1970s, "Alexander" (2004), "Armageddon" (1998), "Beyond the Poseidon Adventure" (1979), "Cannonball Run II" (1981), "Christopher Columbus: The Discovery" (1992), "Dune" (1984), "Eternals" (2021), "Event Horizon" (1997), "Firestarter" (1984), "Gigli" (2003), “The Invasion” (2007), “The Island of Dr. Moreau" (1996), "Last Action Hero" (1993), "The Marvels" (2023), "Police Academy" (1984), "Porky’s" (1981), "Raise the Titanic" (1980), “Rhinestone” (1984), "Snakes On a Plane" (2006), the Star Wars prequels (1999-2005), "The Swarm" (1979), “Toys” (1992), and just about everything director Zack Snyder’s churned out before entering and exiting Warner’s DC superhero franchise known to what either fans or the fantasy filmmaker himself calls the “Snyderverse”.
Oh, how my mind wonders on the mass amounts of man hours I wasted watching what critics considered celluloid junk when my time could have been spent elsewhere. It’s enough to make me wake up in a cold sweat!
No. Not really.
Seeing movies is not only all about being entertained but also in my case following the “law of contrary public opinion” Ricky Roma spoke of in "Glengarry Glen Ross" (1992)
“If everyone thinks one thing, then I say, bet the other way,” Roma said.
I don’t regret watching any of the atrocities the critics loathed. Some I liked. Some I didn’t. The ones I didn’t they at least managed to be bad enough to the point it was a fun bad movie I loved to hate. Others were guilty pleasures.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat through movies the top reviewers and audiences couldn’t stop raving about only to find myself, whether at home watching such overhyped pictures on the flatscreen or at the theater that made me want to scream at the top of my lungs the minute the credits rolled shouting, “Da f--k was this s--t?!?!”You want examples? Here’s a few: "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968), "The Crying Game" (1992), "Howard’s End" (1992), "The English Patient" (1996), “Avatar” (2009), “Deadpool” (2016), "Black Panther" (2018), "Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood" (2019), “Avatar: The Way of Water” (2022),"Top Gun: Maverick" (2022), "Everything Everywhere All at Once" (2022), "Barbie" (2023), “Oppenheimer” (2023) and "Poor Things" (2023).
Coppola shouldn’t be upset by the false advertising Lionsgate used to promote what I and most everyone assumed at the time would be his swan song (he’s reportedly at work on two more films). The clever marketing ploy was the studio’s attempt to prove how wrong the critics have been on their opinions. They succeeded.
I, for one, loved Lionsgate’s promotional misfire which is still accessible on other YouTube channels but not from the distributor who pulled the trailer the same day it aired on the net Aug. 22. I haven’t been able to get enough of the “Megalopolis” trailer’s first 40 seconds as the falsified pull quotes raced across the screen to the tune of an updated instrumental version of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Lacrimosa” as longtime actor and collaborator Laurence Fishburne narrated the preview’s opening with the words, “True genius is often misunderstood.”
Rest assured I will not be reading, let alone relying on what the know-it-all critics say about the film, good or bad. I will not even be upset if the picture is not another triumph like “The Godfather” and is instead another commercial failure equivalent of the 85-year-old filmmaker’s 1981 musical, “One from the Heart” and the troubled mobster production/musical want-to-be “The Cotton Club” (1984).
I’ll decide for myself when I see “Megalopolis” on IMAX opening day Sept. 27 if the directing legend’s latest “fable” inspired by the fall of Rome is “A sloppy self-indulgent movie,” “a spectacular failure”, “a beautiful mess,” or “a triumph of style over substance.” Pull quotes seen in the trailer the critics wrote about in other movies they didn’t approve of but not Coppola’s.
“Megalopolis” may not be, as Fishburne narrated in the trailer, “an event nothing can prepare you for” but seeing it on the big screen will nevertheless be an event independent of itself.
©8/28/24
