I really liked this Be Kind Rewind video on the controversy with Sofia Coppola's casting in The Godfather III, and while I agree that she wasn't good in it, the criticism seemed way over the top, and just ripping apart a then-19-year old woman because she was the director's daughter, a very last-minute replacement, and was insecure acting against veteran heavyweights when she had only had bit parts in movies as a kid.
I liked how Izzy of Be Kind Rewind went over nearly every movie that Sofia Coppola was in as a kid, mainly bit parts or kid sister parts in movies Francis Ford Coppola directed, from appearing as a baby in The Godfather, a kid in the background as Vito sails to America in Godfather II, as a buck-toothed kid sister in Rumble Fish and Peggy Sue Got Married, and, in one of her non-Coppola movies, Tim Burton's initial directorial debut with the original short of Frankenweenie. I've seen these movies, and thought she looked like an awkward and weird-looking kid, but she grew up to have a more unusual beauty and unique quirk to her looks.
A lot of the review talks about how she was unprepared to take this principal role, was insecure on set, knew she would get called out for nepotism, felt awkward at having to do kissing scenes with a much-older Andy Garcia in front of her father and crew members she knew since her childhood, and that she could feel the contempt from other actors who didn't want her there. And I do think she is awkward and wooden, and her monotone Californian accent doesn't fit in with the rest of the family. The other choices after Winona Ryder dropped out due to illness included Annabella Sciorra and Laura San Giacomo, and while I don't think they could portray naivete, I do think they would have been better casting to both play a mature young woman and a daddy's girl type kept out of the mob business.
And the critics picked apart her appearance in a really nasty, cutting way, trying to call her ugly, and I think she is fucking gorgeous. It reeked of when Chelsea Clinton, a nerdy-looking 12-year old child in 1992, got ripped apart by adults in the press for her appearance, and Saturday Night Live included a dig at her appearance in a Wayne's World sketch, which later got edited out in an obvious jump cut.
And I don't think she's the problem with the movie. I thought it was boring and dull, and lacked the more classic epic feeling of the first two movies, it just felt weak by comparison. Francis Ford Coppola made it because he was in serious debt and figured making another Godfather movie would be an easy success and get him out of the hole and avoid bankruptcy for a third time. So, I agree with Izzy that, like how Mary gets the bullet intended for Michael, Sofia took the majority of the blame and criticism for the weaknesses of the movie that FFC made.
I do generally like Sofia Coppola's movies, even if I wasn't interested in seeing Priscilla last year because I don't have any interest in Elvis or Priscilla Presley. I liked her as a Gen-X stylish It girl in the 90s, I adored The Virgin Suicides and Marie Antoinette, and I liked Somewhere a lot. I couldn't ever get into Lost in Translation, I didn't like The Beguiled remake or The Bling Ring, and I didn't see On the Rocks because I don't have Apple TV and it came out during the pandemic when it wasn't showing in theaters, though my parents rented it on DVD and liked it a lot. And I liked the mention of her and Zoe Cassavetes' short-lived show Hi-Octane, which combined MTV-style 90s graphics with guest appearances from their cool celebrity friends like Thurston Moore, the Beastie Boys, and interviews with Martin Scorsese and Naomi Campbell, while having a very Gen-Z indie cool girl vibe to it.
It's an hour long video, so it's long, but it's worth watching if you're a fan of Sofia Coppola or feel like she got unfair criticism for her middling performance in The Godfather III.
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