"Megalopolis Is a Problematic, Massive Flop," wrote the Dallas Observer, "You Might Just Love It Anyway." GQ urged its readers: "Don't look at the tweets, don't look at Letterboxd, don't look at Rotten Tomatoes -- just go to a theater and see it for yourself." In his review for Vanity Fair, Richard Lawson made no such plea, calling the movie "a passion project gone horribly wrong" -- but he did wonder if some audiences might embrace Megalopolis on their own terms. "Maybe some of them will indeed see value in what Coppola has made," he wrote. "Many more, though, will scratch their heads in utter disbelief."
As Megalopolis enters its third week of release, the movie is an unmitigated bomb -- it earned a mere $4 million in its opening weekend and D+ on CinemaScore. It has, however, developed a nascent cult following on the internet, where users regularly share their befuddled reactions to the 2 hr and 18-minute epic and reference Adam Driver's strangely hypnotic reading of the line "go back to the club." Nobody seems to be loving the movie, but they aren't indifferent to it either. Some audience members have logged repeat viewings on Letterboxd, amusingly compared the film's visuals to a Linkin Park music video, or shared their thoughts on a Reddit thread about the film's humor -- which some think is unintentional, but others call deliberate.