The Great Gatsby Reviews
The Playlist
The Great Gatsby is ultimately an epic tragedy, a parable about America, the American dream ethos and its consequences, but the movie's overblown style chokes the life out of any substance the story may have.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
Top CriticThis film marks the official moment in which Baz Luhrmann's signature style has become self-parody. So we beat on, boats against the current, jumping the shark.
And so we wait, wait for the parties to end, wait for sparks to fly, for tragedy to strike, for repercussions to ensue, for our persistently passive protagonist to simply shut up already.
ScreenCrush
Well, you did it Baz Luhrmann. Even with an enormous budget and a camera that can fly around and do just about anything, you still made watching 'The Great Gatsby' just as boring as sitting through 8th period English.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/10
HitFix
It's as if every bit of creativity dried up the moment the deal was signed. Yes, this is exactly what I would expect a Baz Luhrmann 'Gatsby' would look like, but is that enough?
Full Review
| Original Score: C
Screen International
Because Luhrmann is always thirsting for the next grand gesture -- the next emotional crescendo -- the book's subtlety and shading get trampled under his overblown aesthetic.
Las Vegas Informer
Maguire open-mouth stupefaction dominates, Mulligan is miscast, and DiCaprio does his best to save his dignity.
[Luhrmann's] "Great Gatsby" is all about the glitter but it has no soul - and the fact that he's directed it in 3-D only magnifies the feeling of artificiality.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
For the most part, the actors never sync up with Luhrmann's jitterbug rhythm.
Full Review
| Original Score: B-
indieWIRE
Luhrmann seems to relish the opportunity to explore the period while regarding the book as a burden.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
Spirituality and Practice
Yet another screen version of the 1925 novel where style trumps substance, leaving us yearning for some characters who can engage our emotions.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
The anachronistic pop-music cues, digitally augmented tracking shots and disco-globe-glittery production design don't re-create the headiness of early-20th-century New York so much as invent a billowy fantasy otherworld in the gauzy vein of Twilight.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
What Luhrmann grasps even less than previous adapters of the tale is that Fitzgerald was, via his surrogate Carraway, offering an eyewitness account of the decline of the American empire, not an invitation to the ball.
Fitzgerald's illusions were not very different from Gatsby's, but his illusionless book resists destruction even from the most aggressive and powerful despoilers.
James on screenS
DiCaprio is wonderful but can't save this misbegotten film, which is tethered to Fitzgerald's words while failing to approach "Gatsby"'s romantic, heartbreaking soul.
It seldom, if ever, captures that fierce delicacy of feeling Fitzgerald packed into every sentence. And it's not an actors' movie.
I love the publicity quotes by Baz Luhrmann stating that his intention was to make an epic romantic vision that is enormous. Also: overwrought, asinine, exaggerated and boring. But in the end, about as romantic as a pet rock.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1/4
It surely belongs to the category of baroque, overblown, megalomaniacal spectacles dubbed "film follies" by longtime Nation film critic Stuart Klawans.
On paper "Gatsby" sounds like quite the film. On screen, though, things start to fall apart.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Hollywood.com
DiCaprio's Gatsby takes the movie's breath away, forcing Luhrmann to put aside his song and dance infatuation for dazzling performances in the heightened world he's created.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
