Review of The Great Gatsby (2013) by Nikolayg — 07 Mar 2014

This film adaption of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, The Great Gatsby, is about a man in the 1920s trying to win back the woman he loves. This version is a cartoon with real life actors - everything super brightly colored and sporting more special effects than a Star Wars movie, much of it very fake looking. Gatsby's home when shot from the exterior is so obviously computer generated it's shocking. There's plenty of blue screen (or green screen these days) that is about as obvious as can be, with the lighting on the actor standing in front of the green screen not matching the lighting in the scene projected behind him on the green screen. It might as well be a Godzilla movie from the 60s at those moments. You might wonder why they felt the need for so many effects. The camera whizzes around Long Island over and under elevated tracks in Manhattan, almost all of which (both Manhattan and Long Island) appear computer generated, so much like a computer game I felt like readying my controller to start controlling the main character. It's a miracle that amidst all this crazy visual jazz, that the story's basic outline (because that is all there is here; just a skeleton of the plot) doesn't get lost. That was a feat and for that I give it 1 star out of 10.

The movie does calm down in that last half hour and become closer to something normal visually, but by then I was tired of watching. Add to this the bizarre use of hip hop and other music not of the period (Jay-Z and Beyonce; that's Jay Z's ego ruining the movie, as he's a producer of this catastrophe) and you get the impression that this was made by an extremely insecure story teller who had no faith in his audience or in his abilities to capture their attention simply by telling story. Maybe he didn't have faith in his actors. Whatever the cause, the director or whoever called the shots, decided that rendering the story well wasn't enough without overstuffing the production with candy colored effects and noise ad nauseam. The result is that, instead of being drawn into the story, you are constantly pushed out by the weird over-the-top distractions. It's like watching a Shakespeare play while someone constantly lights of fireworks in front of the production. What an ordeal! You think it's innocent enough - just spending a couple hours watching a movie - but by the time it's over you feel like you've been in some kind of two hour accident or a small war. You feel damaged. I recommend instead the novel, which is quite beautifully written.