Wondering whether to buy a ticket to see the controversial just-opened Francis Ford Coppola epic Megalopolis? I saw it opening night and have two words in favor of seeing it: Aubrey Plaza. The actor puts the “up” in supporting actress in her role as a conniving television financial reporter, including basically stopping the show in a surprising third act twist that had the opening-night audience at Hollywood’s historic Chinese Theatre unanimously cheering. (This theater is on the site of the annual Academy Awards, and I’ll be surprised if she’s not back there as a nominee next April.)
Aubrey Plaza was AMAZING in Coppola's New Mess of a Movie, But That's Not the Only New Release to Catch Her In
Psst: Here's the movie to watch with her instead
Published Sep 27, 2024
•6:40pm
Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images
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As a longtime Coppola fan, I’m predisposed to like the two-hours-and-10-minute Megalopolis, the tale of a visionary urban planner who invents a magical new indestructible building material, then seeks to remake a New York City-like setting with it. He comes up against corrupt bureaucrats and schemers, including Plaza’s character Wow Platinum, his soon-to-be-ex-lover. The story rambles (any time a director subtitles his film “A Fable,” it’s going to be self-indulgent), and the actors break into song and quote Shakespeare without warning, so this viewer’s willing suspension of disbelief had to go into overdrive. Except…whenever Plaza was on screen.
As blonde and brassy Wow Platinum, Plaza is having so much fun with her character that we as audience members do, too. She’s winking at the camera, widening her oversized eyes in disbelief, melting to the zaddy charm of lead Adam Driver and basically playing everything like Joan Crawford in the Golden Age of Hollywood. She pulls focus to her character as she trots through scenes like a show pony, and even though she has a selfish, ill-tempered personality, Plaza’s ability to round out Wow as a broken-hearted-but-surviving woman is well, wow-worthy. Her only rival in scenery-chewing is co-star Shia LaBeouf, a shape-shifting rogue politician who shares a memorable sex scene with Plaza that’s both wildly bendy and played for laughs.
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Not sure you have it in you to sit through a preachy swan song from one of cinema’s greatest directors? Then I highly recommend checking Plaza out in My Old Ass, the new indie film from Megan Park. Plaza plays the 20-years-older version of an 18-year-old high school graduate (Maisy Stella). The younger woman accidentally summons her older self when she and her high school pals take mushrooms in a last hurrah before leaving for college in the big city.
Though the movie deploys magical realism, the heart of the film is the wholly realistic, emotional interaction between Plaza and her younger self, full of relatable life lessons of regret, familial love and inner strength. This story is a little bit teen comedy, a little bit tear-jerker and totally enjoyable.
In fact, seeing Plaza in it prompted me to seek out more of her in Disney+’s new series Agatha All Along, in which she plays a Marvel universe baddie. I watch it not for the supernatural plotlines (I stand with you, last handful of working TV writers!), but to hang out with Plaza’s antagonist character, a clever witch who causes trouble for lead Kathryn Hahn.
So, even if you’re like me and missed the initial breakouts of Aubrey Plaza—if you never watched Parks and Recreation, was out to lunch for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and was distracted during The White Lotus season 2—don’t miss her right now in any of her new movie and streaming roles. She’s killing it, giving 10 out of 10, even if and when the projects she’s in aren't to your taste or don’t fully land.
