The Great Gatsby (2013)
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Critics Consensus: While certainly ambitious -- and every bit as visually dazzling as one might expect -- Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby emphasizes visual splendor at the expense of its source material's vibrant heart.
Critics Consensus: While certainly ambitious -- and every bit as visually dazzling as one might expect -- Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby emphasizes visual splendor at the expense of its source material's vibrant heart.
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"The Great Gatsby" follows Fitzgerald-like, would-be writer Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) as he leaves the Midwest and comes to New York City in the spring of 1922, an era of loosening morals, glittering jazz, bootleg kings, and sky-rocketing stocks. Chasing his own American Dream, Nick lands next door to a mysterious, party-giving millionaire, Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), and across the bay from his cousin, Daisy (Carey Mulligan), and her philandering, blue-blooded husband, Tom Buchanan … More- Rating:
- PG-13 (for some violent images, sexual content, smoking, partying and brief language)
- Genre:
- Drama , Romance
- Directed By:
- Baz Luhrmann
- Written By:
- Baz Luhrmann , F. Scott Fitzgerald , Craig Pearce
- In Theaters:
- May 10, 2013 Wide
- On DVD:
- Aug 27, 2013
- US Box Office:
- $144.8M
Cast
-
Leonardo DiCaprio
as Jay Gatsby -
Carey Mulligan
as Daisy Buchanan -
Tobey Maguire
as Nick Carraway -
Isla Fisher
as Myrtle Wilson -
Joel Edgerton
as Tom Buchanan -
Jason Clarke
as George B. Wilson
Related News & Features
-
The Great Gatsby Sweeps Australia's 'Oscars,' the AACTAs
– The Australian
-
Warner Bros. Buys Blood on the Snow for Leonardo DiCaprio
– Deadline Hollywood Daily
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Critic Reviews for The Great Gatsby
All Critics (256) | Top Critics (51) | Fresh (124) | Rotten (132) | DVD (2)
For all the antic, manic itchiness of his Gatsby, for all the jazz hands, the movie doesn't reach out and grab you.
It's stupefying, it's vulgar, it's demeaning-it's dull and there's nothing like the dullness that is trying to be a sensation.
There are no two ways about it: The Great Gatsby is misconceived and misjudged, a crude burlesque on what's probably American literature's most precious jewel.
The central problem with Luhrmann's film is that when it's entertaining it's not Gatsby, and when it's Gatsby it's not entertaining.
The best attempt yet to capture the essence of the novel.
A failure that should have at least been a magnificent mistake.
...of such bacchanalian proportions that it requires an act of will to sit there passively as the senses are not merely assaulted but pummeled into submission. It's akin to watching a play staged on a carousel.
As a filmmaker, Baz has fine technical knowledge but he never knows when to call cut.
Leonardo DiCaprio is wrong as Jay Gatsby but right when, momentarily embarrassed for once, he stammers that 'this is a terrible mistake.'
What's amazing is the mixture of willpower and uncertainty, mendacity and credulity, gracefulness and self-conscious posing that [DiCaprio] conveys, even before you see him speak.
Just because a film looks like it was dipped in 18-karat gold doesn't mean it's rich in quality
Many audiences will write [this] off as style over substance, but I think [director] Luhrmann supplies style along with great substance.
The Great Gatsby is a visual treat & one worth the 3D surcharge, but feels like a lopsided endeavor that captures the style & energy, but not exactly the heart & soul
Boils down to its essence of pure feeling, in every sense--from literal stimulus and sensation to the emotions, in all their seething, loving, consuming, destructive passions, that drive the characters and their actions.
Alternately intriguing and infuriating: it's very like the sort of movie exuberantly excessive Gatsby himself might have made.
This is kitsch at such a deep level it doesn't even seem to be aware that it's kitsch.
Almost 100 percent faithful to the novel in terms of plot, and almost zero percent faithful in terms of theme, character, and impact.
This take, pimped out in 3D spectacle and one woozy romance, renders the '20s as backdrop and swerves around the book's period-politics. A surreal slice-of-a-1922-summer overbaked into maximalist fantasia. The narrative frame is silly; the pacing is off.
An ambitious, multi-colored triumph, this film will be hard to forget.
The Great Gatsby is Baz Luhrman's visual tribute album to the novel; and it's only in his filmmaking comfort zones that any of the essence of the text elevates beyond karaoke.
Adapting Gatsby just so you can recreate the party scenes is like remaking Born on the Fourth of July for the war scenes. Luhrmann has a knack for missing the point.
...as disastrous and pointless an adaptation as one can easily recall...
A stunning recreation of 1920's New York that sticks as close to its source material as it can while delivering an engaging adaptation.
If Fitzgerald's Jazz Age classic is the Great American Novel, then this frantically jazzed-up 3D film is the pop-up-book version.
Though it is quite possible that the neutered feel of Luhrmann's Gatsby is entirely due to studio meddling, the finished product isn't enjoyable, either as campy fun or a serious attempt at dismantling the American dream.
Audience Reviews for The Great Gatsby
It would be cheeky of me if I wasn't forthright in saying that most of Baz Luhrmann's films have put me off. I understand his technique and I appreciate his craft, but the actual films are often too quick with their cuts, too nauseating with their one-note characters, and too over-the-top, period. Yet all of those attributes work very well for a true adaptation of "The Great Gatsby." Not only does it show the opulence of the time period, and the excess of Gatsby's lifestyle, but the drama of the love story between Gatsby and Daisy. Luhrmann is a wizard at turning visually crazed love stories into grand tragedies, and there's no better story than this literary powerhouse. While the backdrops are impossibly cloying, as they are CGI, the rest of the film, from modern soundtrack to big as life performances, feels as emotionally spectacular and huge as the original text. For what it was trying to do and for what it showed, Luhrmann easily succeeded and adapted this poignant love story.
MoreSuper Reviewer
There's a lot to like in this version of F .Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel of the jazz age, although this one's a little to "jazzy" for me. Aussie director Baz Luhrmann was an awesome choice to head this project. He captures the spectacle of the novel and its age better than any other I can imagine. It's reminiscent of his earlier works "Romeo + Juliet" and "Moulin Rouge!" The best aspect of the film is the cinematography: the sets, fashion, jewelry, etc. are executed to perfection.
The cast is excellent; DiCaprio owns this role as much as any he's played. Tobey Maguire is great as well; he's as effective as Sam Waterston was in the 1974 version. I've always thought he owned that role. Robert Redford was good in that version. He's not the actor that DiCaprio is, but he certainly looked the part. Carey Mulligan surprised me how well she played Daisy Buchanan, although after seeing her performance in "An Education," I knew she was destined for greatness.
Summing up what I liked and what I didn't is almost as simple as the film's emphasis on style over substance. That emphasis encompasses the whole jazz age, so that the film portrays that should come as no surprise. Everyone and everything as seen through the eyes of Nick, the narrator, is completely superficial. As an indictment of the near-universal values of the era, this film really works. I did not like much of the soundtrack. It was distracting and anachronistic, just a device to relate the jazz age material to the hip hop generation. Luhrmann's Gatsby is certainly visually stunning and undeniably entertaining, but I think the "update" detracts from the real power of the story.
Super Reviewer
From an insane asylum (wait, what?), Nick Carraway narrates the story of a socialite's attempts to woo his long-lost love.
Baz Luhrmann's lavish style, quick cuts, garish colors, and modern screaming, drum-heavy music attempt to capture the roar of the Roaring Twenties. It's a valiant attempt, and I like when it succeeds and don't get too angry when the style rudely overtakes the story. It's mostly faithful to the source material except for a few glaring dissimilarities that make me wonder if the filmmakers simply felt the need to stamp the story with their spin.
Leonardo DiCaprio is good as Gatsby, capturing the lavishness of his excess and the vulnerability of relationship with Daisy, and Tobey Maguire is fine as literature's most famous witness; although, Maguire isn't allowed to express the appropriate moral outrage at the end of the film. Likewise, the script doesn't give enough to Carey Mulligan to expose Daisy's depth.
Overall, it's a fair attempt, but Luhrmann's luridness is often misplaced.
Super Reviewer
I went into this prejudiced against it, thinking Baz Luhrmann had raped an American classic, bastardised it with rap and CGI, a greedy grab for fame, money, spurned it w/o ever having seen it.
I was wrong.
No film has captured the raw vitality and expansiveness of the Roaring Twenties as well, the ambition, the decadence, the hope, the hope of ambitious decadence. A visual tour de force.
And at the core of it, Fitzgerald's simple tale of an aspiring country boy who dreams of a slice of the American pie, the dream, with the girl of his dreams beside him.
All of the actors are sumptuous, Mulligan, Maguire, Edgerton (the heavy played with humanity) and Fisher ... but DiCaprio surpasses
Super Reviewer
The Great Gatsby Quotes
- Nick Carraway:
- They were careless people, Tom and Daisy. They smashed up things and people, and then retreated back into their money and their vast carelessness.
- Jordan Baker:
- Well, I don't care. He gives large parties, and I like large parties - they're so intimate. Small parties, there isn't any privacy.
- Nick Carraway:
- I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited--they went there.
- Catherine:
- I'm Catherine. Ain't we havin' a party?
- Daisy Buchanan:
- All the bright, precious things fade so fast, and they don't come back.
- Tom Buchanan:
- We're all different from you, and there's nothing that you dream up that can ever change that.
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