Sophia Coppola murders cinema.

Rating: 1/10 (28 October 2006)

Watching this, all I could think about was imagining Francis Ford Coppola handing his daughter a credit card and saying "Honey, you can either go to the mall for new shoes, or make a movie. Your pick, sweetheart." Fortunately for the audience, Sophia chose both, as evidenced by the fantastic shoes in this movie. The only thing missing is a plot, character development, decent dialogue, and any sense of pacing.
This film more or less follows the typical structure of every Sophia Coppola movie:
1. Throw away any structure whatsoever. 2. Show a girl sitting and thinking about stuff. 3. Cut to a fast, poppy montage. 4. Show the girl crying. 5. Show the girl giggling like an idiot. 6. Show the girl crying some more. 7. Cut to a slower, more "lyrical" montage. 8. Show the girl looking kind of sad, but not too sad. 9. Cut to black with no resolution at all, which is okay since there's nothing to resolve.
The "stylized" and "edgy" addition of a hip New Wave soundtrack did nothing but make the movie look like a Falco music video with a ridiculously inflated budget. And with a running time clocking in at an excruciating 123 minutes, Coppola manages to tell us nothing about Marie Antoinette. It's impossible to feel anything for anyone, simply because nobody ever does anything.
I could go on for hours, but I'll sum it up as this: It's as if Coppola took the script from "Clueless", took out all the jokes, and then tacked on that little revolution thing at the end so that, you know, a significant event would occur in the film.
If you insist upon putting yourself through this, if even for morbid curiosity, then at least wait until it comes out on video. Or be prepared to tangle with the theater management for your money back.
I hate this movie.