Review of The Great Gatsby (2013) by Lane Z — 16 Nov 2015

I was thoroughly unimpressed in more ways than one with Baz Lurhmann's take on one of the nation's greatest novels, The Great Gatsby. Considering Lurhmann has had moderate success with Moulin Rouge! and Romeo & Juliet (where he worked with DiCaprio before) it's disappointing how this adaptation could fall so flat with such powerful stars.

While the movie sticks to the source material for the most part, I didn't need the narration from Tobey Maguire the entire time like I was actually reading the book. First, I have never been completely sold on Maguire. I don't think he's a bad actor, but he didn't give any characterization to Nick Carraway. The same goes for most of the actors in this film, including DiCaprio. Nobody's performance deserves any special attention because it felt so cookie-cutter that you might have thought the actors were only showing emotion because of the punctuation on the script they were reading.

I know this was a few years ago, but Leo was coming off some of his best movies, and then this interrupted one of the better strings of successful movies for him. Carey Mulligan is always a delight on screen, but other than crying, sobbing or appearing confused, there wasn't much else for her to do.

Nothing came together for me while I was watching. Scenes cut in and out of flashbacks. Editing was abysmal. Continuity between scenes was a joke. What was the deal with trying to fuse current music into a movie based in the 1920s? None of it felt right. It was pretty much watching an audio book on screen with all the narration we were drug through and when we finally had a chance to watch what was happening on screen without listening to someone tell us about it, the scenes were filled with awkward pauses and stilted dialogue.

Even though Luhrmann stayed faithful to the material, never at any point did I believe it was on par with the magic I read back in high school from Fitzgerald.