I have now seen Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part III twice. The first time was shortly after the Godfather trilogy was released on DVD for the first time in 2002 or so; they came packaged together in a box set so there was no way to not end up with the third one. Everything about it I’d ever heard promised I was in for a miserable time, and naturally the film couldn’t live up (down?) to such low expectations; I remember thinking it wasn’t anything all that special, but it certainly wasn’t the worst movie I’d ever seen.

The other day, laid up with the flu (no, not THAT flu) and bored enough to spend three-odd hours on a movie I'd already watched and didn't care that much for, I watched The Godfather Part III again. Guess what? The Godfather Part III is the worst movie I have ever seen.

This review is primarily intended for people who have seen The Godfather Part III. If you have seen it, feel free to read on and commiserate. If you haven’t seen The Godfather Part III, this is where I’d normally tell you something like “WARNING SPOILER ALERT FREAK THE FUCK OUT” but I’ve got better advice: don’t watch The Godfather Part III.

So anyway: why?

Why was this made? Trilogies are great and all; three’s a nice number and I guess maybe Francis Ford Coppola thought it’d be fun to be able to say “The Godfather Trilogy” rather than “The Godfather and The Godfather Part II” or “The Godfather films, each of which was a great movie directed by someone who had not lost all touch with reality.” The Godfather Part II was a million years long; couldn’t he have just pretended that was two movies, one starring Al Pacino and one starring Robert DeNiro? I know that’s completely ridiculous and pointless, but so is The Godfather Part III.

Why is Andy Garcia almost a good actor, and then every once in awhile he delivers one of his lines in a completely inappropriate piss shiver scream? I guess he’s trying to convey his character is a hothead, but it comes across like he’s getting an electrical shock, possibly from Francis Ford Coppola, who forgot how to direct human beings sometime in the 1980s and may have seen the need to actually hook them up to machines.

Why is there a big crazy helicopter shootout? Did all movies in the early '90s that cost more than $50 million have to have a helicopter shoot a bunch of people, or something equally garish and stupid? Why would Francis Ford Coppola turn into Jerry Bruckheimer, even for five minutes? Oh, yeah – he lost his damn mind.

Why does Al Pacino sound like Christian Bale’s Batman when he talks? I swear to god it’s the same portentous gravelly nonsense that was going on in The Dark Knight. Is that how Al Pacino sounds post-1990? I don’t know if I’ve seen anything he’s done later than this movie. Did he smoke eight packs a day for a couple decades? Is he just fucking with us?

Why did Francis Ford Coppola put his goddamn daughter in the movie? Okay, I know part of the answer to this I think: from what I understand, Winona Ryder was supposed to play Michael Corleone’s daughter but broke her arm a couple weeks before shooting and was unable to fulfill her commitment. But why in the name of fuck do you cast somebody who’s obviously never been in front of a camera? And how, if you’re Sofia Coppola, can you not at least fake being a decent actress? Your dad makes movies for a living but you act like you’ve never even seen a movie, let alone hung out on film sets since you were a toddler. Sofia Coppola’s acting is one of the most common complaints about The Godfather Part III, and for damn good reason: every time she’s onscreen you feel embarrassed for her. She had to direct Lost in Translation and star in a Chemical Brothers video to make people even begin to forget her performance in this movie.

Why wasn't Joe Pesci in this? They make room to cast George Motherfucking Hamilton but not Pesci? I mean, I dunno who he would've played... Probably a short angry guy who stabs somebody with a fork or a pen every ten minutes. I dunno. It just seems like Joe Pesci should be in this.

Why is there all that stuff with the Vatican? I had it kind of figured out for at least half the movie; maybe I just plain stopped caring, but I could not for the life of me figure out why that bishop was murdered at the end during that achingly clumsy opera/”everybody gets murdered” montage. I guess it was so they could have a sorta cool shot of a murdered bishop getting thrown over a stairwell, logic be damned.

And finally (seriously, if you haven’t seen the movie and you think you might someday, I’m about to ruin it even more than Francis Ford Coppola): why are the last two minutes of the movie actually really good? You spend the whole movie wishing Sofia Coppola’s character will die, and then all the sudden she gets shot, and it’s a sucker punch I legitimately not only didn’t see coming but would’ve never thought would actually knock the wind out of me. And you’re forced to remember oh yeah, the first two Godfather films are just as good as everyone says they are, just as good as the rest of this one is garbage, and then Michael Corleone’s dying alone and pathetic somewhere in Sicily and you actually care what’s going on in this movie for the first time since you came to the realization that it’s completely shitty. And it just makes you hate the film even more.

In conclusion, the last episode of The Sopranos was really good and anyone who says it wasn’t is a big fat baby.