This is not a review. This is a warning. If I gave Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” a standard movie review and told you that it was an incoherent mess on par with “Rebel Moon” (which it is), your fanboy reflexes would kick and you’d write me off. You’d take me as just another pair of glasses dead set on panning a movie just to bolster their art cred. I hate critics like that, and so do you.

So I’m telling you this not as a reviewer, but as a friend: Do not see this movie. It is a piece of s—t.

You’ve been warned various times already. You were warned when the Guardian reported this spring that crew members on “Megalopolis” described its making, paid for entirely by Coppola thanks to his fortune in winemaking, as a “train wreck.” You were warned when that same article leveled allegations that the old man would sexually harass female crew members (barf) and burn hours of shooting time just hanging out and smoking weed instead of working (OK I respect it). Coppola has denied the allegations, and has sued Variety for its own investigation into his reported wrongdoing. In its introduction, the written complaint in that suit includes the sentence, “Some people are jealous and resentful of genius.” Go ahead and take that sentence as a warning, too.

Because Coppola has been running defense for this film basically ever since it wrapped. Lionsgate, the only studio willing to distribute Coppola’s vanity project, tried to get ahead of the damage by releasing a trailer larded with critical barbs that had been levied against Coppola’s old masterpieces, quotes that turned out to be fabricated.

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But perhaps those warnings haven’t been enough. Perhaps, like me, you keep a soft spot in your heart for Coppola, a member of the auteur revolution who made a string of masterpieces through the ’70s and ’80s, but has made none since. Perhaps, like me, you were drawn in by a cast that includes Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Dustin Hoffman, the god Giancarlo Esposito and other luminaries. And perhaps, like me, you’re so worn out by corporate filmmaking that you’re down with any movie that showcases pure artistic ambition, even if the end result is a misfire. Maybe this thing is a disaster, but maybe that’s the fun of it, yeah? Like gawking at a car wreck?

Wrong. This movie is unwatchable. It deserves to live in infamy, with its title acting as shorthand for any multimillion-dollar flop borne out of monstrous ego. I took a bullet watching “Megalopolis” for you. An actual bullet would have........

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