Why I Saw It: Mainly the cast and it has been one of my favorite trailers for a while.
Cast: I think I like Leonardo DiCaprio. I simply don't think he fit this role. He can play a smooth aristocrat (see Django Unchained) and he can play the intense, brooding type (see Shutter Island, most recently). I just don't think he can do both at the same time. Simply put, Gatsby's a tall order for anyone. Tobey Maguire has a bit too much of an "aww, shucks" quality to him to pull off Nick Carraway appropriately. Carey Mulligan sells some tough dialogue and is probably my favorite character in the movie. Joel Edgerton does a great job portraying "old money", Tom Buchanan. I like seeing Isla Fisher on screen, but it was weird. It's like she went into this as a comedy or something. Perhaps that's my way of saying I wasn't a fan of her accent (which is probably the point). Basically, no one else is around long enough to be worth mentioning. Ok, maybe Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan Baker, but she was cut down a lot from the book.
Plot: Familiar with the book? Well, the movie didn't diverge from it much at all. The main difference is that I think it's even less concerned about Nick's involvement in the story. If he wasn't the narrator, I could see a version of this with him cut out. Like the book, however, it is highly narrated which, I think, made it too easy. This is the first time I ever read a book immediately before seeing the movie (finished at noon, saw a 1 pm showing), and I couldn't help but notice how much of the dialogue is used from the book, even if the wording sounds awkward when transferred to the screen. A couple times, the narration literally cuts out the dialogue because that's what the book does. Is it possible to be too exact of an adaptation? Oh, and the whole movie constantly reminds you that this is a book. That not only leads to a really awkward nesting of the story into a manuscript, but it means there's a lot of shots with words literally on the screen. It's sort of laughable.
Elephant in the Room: Does The Great Gatbsy really need the Baz Luhrmann treatment? This is the guy who gave us Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge!, so you know what this movie is going to look like before ever seeing a frame. Here's my guess. Luhrmann read The Great Gatsby and thought "huh, 1920s New York sounds fun". He got a lot a cool images in his head and he wrote a generic screenplay that is a literal adaptation of the book, then decided to make it 3D because that man loves his visuals. I saw it in 2D, so I can't speak to the effectiveness of the 3D, but I suspect it was loud and layered, although I can't imagine it would be enough to save the movie.
To Sum Things Up:
At best, this is misguided. At worst, it is lazy. I imagine that a Baz Lurhmann movie never comes together until post-production, so I can understand how everyone involved in this probably thought this would be a much better movie than it is. I've been looking forward to seeing this since it first got pushed back to May 2013, so it surprised me how quickly I was bored watching this. This book is notorious for being a tough adaptation and this attempt is no exception. It was a valiant effort, little more.
Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend
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