The Great Gatsby

Both reviewers on our site liked this quite a bit. It's getting hammered on Rotten Tomatoes but most of those are railing about it not being true to the book. You'd think these guys have never seen a movie based on a book before.

Anyway, viewers so far like it quite a bit. The crux of my review is below:

This is a film I’ve been looking forward to since the first previews appeared. This latest interpretation of the book comes to us from Baz Luhrmann, who’s previously directed four films, including Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge!, which I heartily enjoyed. All of his films are dreamy, bold and risky projects that are usually polarizing for most viewers. The Great Gatsby seems a perfect playground for such a creative imagination.

Luhrmann started right off with a look and feel that fully tantalize the senses. Everything, including the opening (and closing) titles, is curious, audacious and endlessly enveloping. Every location is simply resplendent. It seems quite obvious that one major hurdle facing Luhrmann was the necessity of selling today’s audiences on the sheer grandiose excess of Jay Gatsby. The 1920s were a heady time. Conveying that to viewers used to cell phones, laser light shows and large-screen HDTVs is no small order, yet Luhrmann delivers. When Gatsby finally introduces himself, the energy is palpable. The famous parties jump off the screen with mind-blowing decadence the likes of which none of us will ever experience while, at the same time, feeling entirely realistic.

The special effects are of the highest caliber throughout with the sound providing nuanced depth unlike anything I’ve ever experienced in a theater before. It’s not easy to spot Oscar-worthy sound effects, but this one seems a lock.

There are some missteps along the way. The film feels epic but never reaches into your soul. There’s virtually no emotion to it. I never bought into several of the key relationships — most notably the one between Gatsby and Daisy. There’s also a major question about Carroway that involves his current state both in his introduction and final scene that seems entirely unanswered and obvious, but that’s better left unsaid in a review.

DiCaprio is, as noted, a great Gatsby, but his use of the catch phrase “old sport” felt entirely unnatural and distracting.

What we're left with is a great fairy tale told with spectacular flourishes that tickles the imagination and plays with our sense of right and wrong. The journey is both effortless and enjoyable if not entirely satisfying.

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Meh. I'm not at all interested in watching this film. I love the book, but I don't particularly care for Baz Luhrmann's style of filmmaking (hated both Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!).

I really enjoyed this film , giving it a . However unbelievably I had no prior knowledge of the story. I did not enjoy Romeo and Juliet at all, and admittedly it took me 20 minutes to settle into Luhrmann's visual style. Once I did I enjoyed the story immensely. Plenty to ponder and look at.

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I really cannot wait to see this film. The sense of theatre that Baz Luhrmann brings to his films alone is worth the ticket price. Unfortunately it doesn't open here until May 30th.

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I never read the story either and for Dash, the look and sound are incredible. Be sure to see it in a good theater but don't bother with the 3D. Totally unnecessary and likely will even reduce the impact a bit.

I'm seeing it thursday (probably in 3D)! I'm looking forward to it, as it is one my most anticipated movies of the year.

Nick Carraway moves next to an eccentric millionaire, Mr. Jay Gatsby, who throws lavish parties every single night. One night he receives an invitation to the party, the only invitation Gatsby has ever given to anyone to attend his gathering. Who is this Mr. Gatsby, why does he throw lavish parties every night and what are his real intentions?

I read the book in preparation for this film, something I rarely do. I was left underwhelmed by the book and overexposed by the film. While the Baz Luhrmann does stay faithful to the words on the page, the overall tone and feel of the picture seems to be in the wrong place. When the truth about the book is about the falseness of these rich people and their empty lives while using the pedestal of a love story to get through it, Luhrmann seems more interested, or maybe the studio was, at making the love story front and centre, almost ignoring the more interesting aspects of the tale. What is left is an hollow film, that is fancy for the eyes and not much more.

I chose to see the in 2D and judging by what I saw, I don't think I would have missed the confetti and floating typewriter words coming at me very much. Luhrmann's films always look like the prettiest girl at the ball. Gatsby is probably the prettiest of them all and with good reason too. Those parties Gatsby throws is wonderful, full of energy, vibrant colours and dance numbers. It's at one of these parties that we are introduced to Gatsby, in one of the most over the top and perfect character introductions I've seen on film. DiCaprio captures the essence of Gatsby, a lonely insecure man who hides behind his riches and puts on this mysterious front. He looks the part, acts the part and is one of the highlights of the picture. No one else seems to be on the same page as him though.

Joel Edgerton is Tom Buchanan, a brutish fellow who is having an affair. Edgerton chomps on his cigars, kisses his woman and loves to poke the fire when it is hot. His wife, Daisy, played by the timid as a mouse Carey Mulligan is the picturesque woman that Gatsby is pining for. She doesn't seem to have a real identity. She is torn between two men, but nothing else of her character wants to come though. Her cousin, Nick Carraway is played by Peter Parker himself, Tobey Maguire. Much like the book, he is give nothing to do but walk around in the background with a drink in his hand. Maguire takes this thankless role and adds no flare, no emotion, no sense of tragedy to it. Aside from Pleasantville, I've yet to see a good Tobey Maguire performance.

The story is a tragic one and even if Luhrmann didn't want to focus on the rich and famous and just centre on this love story, he should have added more stakes into it. Character with little to no screen time early on in the film, play major roles later on. It's an odd balance, made even odder by the Luhrmann flare he puts in it. The film feels like Moulin Rouge, with the over exaggerated expressions and acting from the background characters. The choice of modern music in an old time era, Luhrmann even uses the same plot device with a man telling the story at a typewriter.

But like I said, the film look gorgeous, sounds great and is very eccentric, much like the characters that inhabit this story. This is probably the closest adaptation of The Great Gatsby we'll get, even if it didn't get it right.

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Suspect's Reviews

I watched it this afternoon and I actually thought it was pretty good.
DiCaprio did a very good job playing the Gatsby character and the real message of the whole story is pretty well displayed in the film, in my opinion.
I have to admit, however, that the visuals sometimes overshadowed the real substance of some scenes, but it didn't completely bother me.

The Great Gatsby is probably a (-) for me. I'll give my definitive thoughts and a short analysis of the movie in my review topic in a couple of days.

It's been a week (tomorrow) since I saw The Great Gatsby and it doesn't hold up well in my mind. I haven't been thinking about it. It hasn't left a great impression on me. It's not a very good movie. I give it .

The first portion of this film is very flashy, all song and dance. So very Lurhmann for a lack of a better word. Once he decided to slow everything down, it got a bit better. Almost as if the entire beginning was building up to the introduction of Leo as Gatsby.

Leo does well enough, but no one else seems at his level. The film is ultimately all flash and little substance. As is most of Lurhmann's work.

I enjoyed it and found it entertaining but it had no emotion to it. It felt like one long pop video
It's funny because Moulin Rouge is very emotional and The Great Gatsby is a very depressing novel. It felt like Baz read it and thought "Ooh, this one's a bit of a downer."

The flat party scene is off. The whole point is that Nick is completely out of control. To be honest, if Baz wanted a modern version, I'd rather Nick had been on drugs for this as none of the craziness comes through. It just looks like a modern party.

As for Nick's sexuality, he doesn't really have one (both the waking-up in a man's bed and the Jordan romance are cut). That could have been interesting, to portray Nick as a bit of a stalker who lives vicariously through Gatsby and Daisy's relationship, which is how he comes across.

As for comparisons with the 1974 version, despite that one's very slow pace, it feels much more emotional. If someone could merge Baz's energy with that film's emotion, you might really get a great Gatsby.

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I really didn't care for it. I thought Michelle Williams tried to make Daisy smarter than what she was. Even Tobey made Nick too dopey for me. I wish I heard Gatsby tell his story instead of Nick narrating it. I think i have a strong bias towards needless narration! Ha!

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*Carey Mulligan, not Michelle Williams.

I thought she did a great job portraying the actual superficiality of the character, while still making her attractive power believable. Otherwise it wouldn't be realistic that Gatsby fell for her that much.

I totally agree with you on Leonardo DiCaprio's performance. He did an amazing job as Gatsby, but throwing "old sport" at the end of every sentence did get annoying. It was like Men in Black 3 where Josh Brolin kept saying "cowboy" all the time. But the acting overall was well done.
I can't say much about the emotional depth of the film since there were several points where I lost concentration, because despite its interesting visual style I found the film really boring. It didn't pick up for me until that scene where Gatsby was getting ready to tell Buchanan about his relationship with Daisy when Daisy cut him off. That felt pretty intense, but it was nothing compared to the shouting match that followed.
In the end, The Great Gatsby averages to just being an okay movie. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it.

He says it at the end of every sentence in the book.

I am not i big drama movie fan but i enjoy watching the original Gatsby movie love it, i hope they did as good of a job with the new Gatsby film.

This was a much better movie than the misleadingly cut trailer made it out to be. Luhrman avoided the temptation of being taken in by the glitz. The parties -- both Tom's little mud wallow with Myrtle and Gatsby's extravaganzas -- are as chaotic, as crass and as hollow as they should be. The anachronistic music make emotional sense where its used. DiCaprio is an excellent Gatsby -- a man visibly playing a part, watching himself play it, anxious about being found out, and urgently delusional about Daisy. Tobey Maguire plays Nick as a wide eyed naif from the Midwest, almost a bumpkin. Joel Edgerton is a very convincing Tom -- self assured, bullying, pedantic, proprietary, contemptuous of his inferiors, but far more intelligent than he first looks. He and DiCaprio really bring off the confrontation at the Plaza that is the story's climax. Carey Mulligan is an adequate Daisy, who is anyway mostly a projection of Gatsby's; she's petulant, bored, resentful of Tom's infidelities, ready for a fling with a lost girlhood love, but nothing more than that. Elizabeth Debicki is underused as a magnetic Jordan Baker, and Isla Fisher has great fun playing Myrtle Wilson as a working class floozy.

The Great Gatsby is based on a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald with the same name which is is widely considered to be a literary classic. The book wasn't a success until the World War II and it became a part of high school curriculum in the following decades. The book has remained popular since, leading to numerous stage and film adaptations.
Latest adaptation was done by Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce who worked together on Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge. Who is familiar with Luhrmann's work won't be surprised with his vision of this great story but others could be, which fortunately doesn't need to end badly.

The Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), a Yale graduate from the Midwest who gets a job in New York as a bond salesman. He rents a small house on Long Island next door to the lavish mansion of Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), a mysterious millionaire who holds extravagant parties. On the other side of the bay is a home of his cousin, Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan), and her husband, Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton), a college acquaintance of Nick's. Soon Nick gets invited to one of Gatsby's parties (later he learns that he was the only one, ever, to receive an invitation). There he meets the mysterious Gatsby and slowly learns that he knows and is in love with Nick's cousin Daisy from across the bay. As Nick helps him to meet with her he starts discovering more about Gatsby and his life and soon becomes the only one who cared about him and not only about his money. The two of them created a real friendship which ended with Nick writing a story about it in an asylum.
Although movie fallows the novel pretty well it didn't manage to show main points. Fitzgerald wanted to present the Jazz Age, whenjazz music and dance became popular and wider cultural changes during that period. You just don't present the Jazz age with Jay-Z and dubstep (which completely destroyed the big party scene), two second shots and CGI which often looks like cartoon or at least very similar to the one from Sin City. Also, the novel provides a critical social history of America during the Roaring Twenties, era known for unprecedented economic prosperity, the evolution of jazz, flapper culture and organized crime while the movie is almost completely concentrated on the love story which is only one of the ways Fitzgerald tried to criticized that historical period. But we won't take those facts as major disadvantages of the story since we have to look at this movie primary as independent work.

What we will take as disadvantage is fast paced editing which sometimes can literally cause a seizure. There probably aren't any no-CGI shots longer than 3 seconds and sometimes is hard to notice anything around characters which is tragedy since the scenery is wonderful and those who weren't enjoying in story could enjoy in visual impression. Luhrmann's approach to this story was fairy-tale-like which sometimes looked strange but at the end it left good impression and it could be called great move. Shots of old New York are great and CGI in them is wonderful. Well, visually The Great Gatsby is one of strongest movies lately and all that kitsch in it fits well. Only negative critic on visual part are car driving scenes which look like the ones from Frank Miller's Sin City, only more colorful. They look great but that way of shooting it just don't fit to the atmosphere of the movie.
The story itself is very good, primary because almost everybody will find something interesting that they will follow. If you aren't the lover of romance (which is pretty solid here) you'll maybe be interested in Nick's entering into the New York's high class, or maybe in mystery around Gatsby or in way of life almost one hundred years ago. There's something for almost anybody in here.

Characters leave great impression. It's hard to forget Gatsby, Nick, Daisy and Tom and the credit for that goes to both writing and acting. Performance is top class but we expect nothing less from A-list actors although there was a lot of skepticism around Maguire being Nick but it ended as a positive surprise (not great though). There was some talking about Gatsby being DiCaprio's first bad role in 15 years. That's nonsense. His Gatsby is great, although a little bit different from the original one but he's a pretty complicated character, one of those iconic ones because he can be interpreted in so many ways: a hopeless romantic, a completely obsessed wacko or a dangerous gangster clinging to wealth with one very irritating habit, the phrase old sport. That phrase is said 55 times during the movie; all but four of those times are delivered by Gatsby which means that he delivered it in average every 2,7 minutes!
All in all The Great Gatsby is a solid adaptation of Fitzgerald work. It missed some of main points of the novel but it is made for modern viewers so it's probably on purpose. It's visually strong, with way too paced editing, good multilayer story, terrible soundtrack in the first half and great performance. Definitely worth of seeing.

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I went and saw The Great Gatsby yesterday, and I was pleasantly surprised, though not overwhelmingly. Overall, I enjoyed the film a lot, but also had a lot of problems with it. I want to also mention, I don't know most of the actors names off the top of my head, so I'll refer to them as their character name. And, I have read the book (or most of it) in high school, but don't remember it too well. First I'll start with some good news.

I'm personally surprised to hear people say there's wasn't much emotion in it, or wasn't emotionally grasping. I thought the opposite and this was one main reason I ended up liking the movie so much. I thought the poetic aspect of the book was portrayed wonderfully, in a way usually only written word can do, and to do so in film is even more moving. I thought all the acting was great, as well as the wardrobe (you can't go wrong with city fashion from the 20's).

I especially liked the acting of character Tom Buchannan. It was, for lack of a better word, perfect. It's one of those performances I can't even analyze because there really is no criticism, and all I could see was the character. It's almost as if Tom Buchannan was a real person, that was him (as he was meant to be portrayed, I can't remember the book well enough to compare), up on screen, playing himself.

I think Tobey Maguire is a good actor, but unfortunately, is one of those actors who cannot play anyone other than himself. By this I mean, no matter what character he plays, or how well, we still think "Tobey Maguire" when we look at him, not, for instance, "Nick Carroway". (I find this the same for Brad Pitt, but even more so, just a side comment) But I think that's why he was cast in this role, because he sweats innocence/nativity. And can hit emotional points well.

The ladies were wonderful, Isla Fischer continues to surprise me with her acting, she really is a great actress, and I think completely underrated because of some of the movies she's done. The Jordan Baker character was fabulous, and I agree with an earlier review on the thread that she was absolutely under-used. This, in fact, was one of my main problems which I'll go into later. And of course, Daisy was acted well for the part. Unfortunately, parts like this one usually are over-acted in a way, or made to seem surreal maybe, to be more poetic, which worked well in this film especially, but still makes me not enjoy the performance as much.

Leonardo DiCaprio has come a long way since I first saw him on film, he was amazing at showing subtle and subtle-yet-not-so-subtle emotion, and I think he should've been able to show more emotion in certain scenes, particularly near the end. I feel like he was holding back, and I'm not sure why he did this. I think he did a great, GREAT acting job, but I don't know if he was the right choice for Gatsby. He didn't fit it well in my mind.

One thing, as I mentioned at the beginning, that I did like was it's poetic nature. It wasn't constant, but there were quite a few scenes/moments when the dialogue and the visual was just beauty. This includes the very end. I also love literature, though I don't get to read full novels too often, I love good writing and I remember really enjoying this novel. (Similar to Catcher In The Rye, many people don't like the book, but I thought both were true works of art through written word). Anyway, this may have had an influence on me. In terms with this, I thought the movie did a good job of highlighting themes of the book. But...

It obviously did not do the book justice. I say this as someone who doesn't remember it well, but could still realize that the movie was a compilation of a few scenes in the novel, with the rest of the story a footnote. A scene which continues for 20 minutes in a movie, is a scene which takes 20 minutes to read in a book. But a book takes 24 hours or more to read, while a movie is 2 hours.

Also, I think Luhrman was way too preoccupied with making it modern, or rather appealing to modern audiences. The entire substance and flesh of the story IS the 1920's, the bootlegging, the fashion, the aristocracy versus the immigrants. The fashion was done well, and the then-idea of money and status was done fairly well, though more or less just touched upon. The whole idea of bootlegging I think was touched upon, and not well. There was ONE scene which dug into the idea, and the scene wasn't even about bootlegging, and furthermore the whole mood of the scene was cut short when Buchannan entered only a few minutes in. Gatsby was who he was, superficially or otherwise, because of bootlegging, and it's effect on the rich and their partying. It seemed like alcohol was used more as an alluring tool to induce dream sequences, rather than be a base of the story.

The love aspect was done well. I think it could have been done better, as I believe Daisy and Gatsby's relationship was one of the major themes of the book. But I'm not going to say what I think should've been done. I will say the scene where they meet for tea was adorable, one of my favorites in the whole movie, and Leo was too funny. But after that, they tried to do too much at once. Making a dramatic climax and mixing all that led up to that plus the infatuation, plus the ending; it was too much at once. The first, what, half hour or forty minutes before Gatsby is even seen, is a stretch of introductory scene's the ideas of which could've been done in half the time. I understand wanting to create aloof and mystery in Gatsby's character, but I don't even think this was done well during that time. The scene with Myrtle and Tom in the apartment was fun, even if the music distracted me while I wondered "what is going on?".

Which brings me to my next point, the music. Some of which fit nicely, (or I just got more used to it later on in the movie), and all of it I enjoyed. By itself. Not with the movie. I think maybe, it might possibly work to younger ears who have no idea what a jazz party sounds like or what jazz or the time was about. I don't really buy this theory though, because I am not at all old, I'm 26. For me, who was personally looking forward to seeing the parties with jazz music in the background (maybe modernized a little bit with some extra bass or easier rhythms), who is a huge fan of the musical Chicago, I was caught completely off-guard and did not like it at all.

Lastly, if you're even still reading at this point, I'll discuss the visuals. Wide range of opinion on this. In some ways, I thought it was just wonderfully done. The scene we meet Daisy, when he first enters the Gatsby party, when he's looking out the window from the apartment, the afternoon tea scene, the driving scenes, all stand out in my mind from a purely visual stand point. The directing was really well done in the classic sense, where the actors were caught well in the picture, small things were subtly highlighted, the things I personally don't notice as I'm watching too often because I'm so engrossed in the film, but are the reasons I become so engrossed. But, again, the CGI more than often did not enhance the movie at all, in fact sometimes it ruined parts of it. I liked the effect of it most of the time, and I can see why it was done and what effect they wanted it to have (besides having to do it for practical reasons, like a wide shot of New York), but again it did not fit to what I thought the movie should be. It made it seem UNreal, instead of SURreal, if that makes any sense to anyone.

But like I said, over all I really enjoyed it, and I give it 8/10. I want to go see it again!

I forgot to add my feelings about Jordan Baker, who I know in the book is a main character, and I thought she was striking in every scene, and thus should have been featured more.

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This new rendition of The Great Gatsby is ridiculous; and believe me, I always try to see the best in things, old sport. The party scenes and music choices literally had me laughing out loud AT this film, not with it. An attempt at modernization of a vintage tale in all the wrong spots. Even some of the serious scenes felt overacted and unbelievable. With a budget of over 100 million I had expected much more elaborate costuming and sets. I did like the outfits that were used, but I just could not buy into all the digital settings. This is both a tragic story, and a tragedy for the film vault. I wish they would have had Tim Burton direct a modernization of this, I can see Johnny Depp as Gatsby or even Nick.

5/10

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