If nothing else, Megapolis is a whole bunch of movies. But not in a good way.

Francis Ford Coppola’s longest-running passion project – in development since the 1970s – is a film of expansive ambition: Megapolis gestures to ideas and concepts ranging from cultural decay to national debt, architecture and zoning. It’s a film about the slow, sad death of a once great republic. Yes, Coppola, the director of The godfatherstill believes in America. But he’s not sure that America believes in itself, so he’s made a film that seems to want to illuminate the entire nature of art, society, and human existence, all while demanding that people reach for more.

Surely it declares that there must be something better – something more beautiful and inspiring, something more worthy of epochs of evolution and human struggle – than the way we live now?

If Megapolis If there’s any indication, the answer is unfortunately no.

The film is ambitious, yes, but in a way that’s so clumsy as to be comical. Characters speak in elliptical, pseudo-Shakespearean runes, so absurdly self-serious that they sound like dramatic readings of tweets. The film’s story is a tangle of opaque plots and subplots that are almost impossible to follow. There are striking images, but the film’s slick digital sheen makes it look like it was shot on an old iPhone. It’s a film that aims to inspire awe, but it’s more likely to provoke LOL. After seeing this film you will no longer believe in a better world. You’ll just be scratching your head.

Megalopolis? More like, MegaFlopThisIs.

Set in a retro-futuristic version of New York City called New Rome, the film at times plays like an elaborate stunt designed to prove that, yes, men Really think about the Roman Empire all the time.

The new Rome is in decline, decaying, falling apart and saddled with debt and budget problems. Yes, this is a film based on public finance problems. Not surprisingly, it makes about as much sense as a city budget hearing.

To solve New Rome’s woes, brilliant architect Cesar Catalina (Adam Driver) gets a federal permit to clear the old city and turn it into something new, something beautiful, which in practice means creating a goofy-looking, science fiction cityscape is built from a special substance called Megalon, which can control time. (Unfortunately, this movie couldn’t move any faster.) But Catalina has a rival in the form of New Rome’s mayor, Franklin Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who wants to build something uglier and more conventional, a city more focused on satisfying the people’s needs now instead of creating a monument that will inspire people in the future.

From this conflict emerges a city’s worth of characters and subplots, often featuring big-name acting talent: there’s Nathalie Emmanuel as Cicero’s beautiful daughter and Cesar’s love interest; Shia LaBeouf vamps embarrassingly as Clodio Pulcher, Cesar’s jealous cousin; Jon Voight as an evasive, older financial expert; Lawrence Fishbourne as Cesar’s driver and bodyman; Dustin Hoffman as Nush Berman, a city apparatchik; and Aubrey Plaza as a vain and egotistical TV personality whose name is Wow Platinum for some reason.

Wow. Just now…Wow.

What any of these characters want in the movie, or even what they’re talking about in a given scene, is often maddeningly unclear. There are complex government machinations at work that are never explained (fair enough, I guess), as well as various family ties and personal feuds that never quite coalesce into a simple plot.

What the film comes closest to a unified dramatic arc is Cesar’s quest to build his new city, but far too often: Megapolis deviates from the course and from the subject. At their best, these detours offer inspired visions of the decadence of a falling republic, as in a showy circus event at the revamped Madison Square Garden that features both chariot races and professional wrestlers. At its worst, the film’s middle hour is simply disjointed to the point where it might have been even more exciting if more time had been spent on the details of city fiscal policy.

Megapolis wants to be about everything, but in the end it is about very little.

To the extent that a clear theme emerges, it does so almost unintentionally. For all its sociopolitical images, Megapolis isn’t really a movie about America or Rome or human nature. It’s about art, ambition and commerce in Hollywood.

Cesar is quite clearly a replacement for Coppola: he is surrounded by visionless leaders, selfish fighters, sneering sycophants and squeaky money men. He wants to create something great, something impossible, something never seen before, something for posterity. He understands that great artists and great visions are not understood or appreciated in their time, but he perseveres anyway, for the sake of the future. The difference is that Coppola didn’t create a city; he made a movie.

I’ll say this to Coppola: the man is a true visionary. His filmography from the 1970s – two Godfather films plus The conversation And Apocalypse now– perhaps the best four-film series from any director ever. For all his clumsiness, his ambition is radical and commendable.

But Megapolis is a mega mess. Few will understand or appreciate it now, and I have my doubts about the future.