It’s very rare for me to see a film on Letterboxd that has my friends so completely divided, the range of friends ratings goes from 0.5 stars up to 4.5 out of 5. The wild variety of ratings and reviews made me realise this was a film I had to go and make up my own mind about.
In all honesty, I did go into this screening with somewhat low expectations after seeing a variety of critic reactions, but the beginning of the film made me wonder if people were being too harsh? Well it turns out they were being fair. If you stripped annd edited all the pretentious shots and plots there could be a good film but unfortunately this wasn’t that film. I did understand the story that Coppola was trying to tell, and I respect it, but the execution wasn’t there at all.
I can’t sit here and say every element of this film was awful, I did start to enjoy it in the earlier parts and wonder if it wasn’t too bad, but after the first hour or so, the plot began to fall apart. The actors were good and they were doing what they could with the script, to be honest, despite everything Adam Driver was still a standout for me, and his scenes with Nathalie Emmanuel were some of the most enjoyable. Additionally, Aubrey Plaza did a great job with such a shallow character as well as the rest of the supporting cast and I do truly feel bad for the cast and crew who clearly put a lot of energy into this film which had such a negative reception.
But in all honesty this film was just a disjointed, patchwork mess – I could not sit here and tell anyone exactly what the film was or make much sense of it, when we sat and recalled parts of the film to our friends we sounded a little bit insane. It’s honestly painful to watch a film that could’ve had so much potential end up in this way, but at least I can say I saw it!
It’s very rare for me to do negative reviews on here because I appreciate that films are a project worked on by so many people, so don’t let this or any review determine your decision on whether to watch it or not. I’ve seen that people have enjoyed this, I just wasn’t one of them.
The trailer:
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