The Great Gatsby Reviews
Us Weekly
Just because a film looks like it was dipped in 18-karat gold doesn't mean it's rich in quality
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
The Patriot Ledger
Everything about Baz Luhrmann's glam and glitzy interpretation of 'The Great Gatsby' is pretty - pretty actors; pretty homes; pretty scenery; pretty parties; and most of all, pretty boring.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
Deadspin
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: C
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+
Concrete Playground
Baz Luhrmann's Gatsby is a tale of two halves: unremarkable in the first and unexpected in the second.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Bloomberg News
Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby" is a gaudy, Ritz-sized rhinestone of a movie, more flashy than dazzling, beguiling from some angles and phony to its core.
MLive.com
For all of the impossible, succulent beauty Luhrmann shows us, the film doesn't thoroughly cultivate the emotional foundation it needs to prop up such extravagance.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Austin American-Statesman
It almost seems as if the director is priming the pump for the inevitable Broadway musical.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
The Aristocrat
It may sound like a strange comparison, but the film that Gatsby reminded me of the most is Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
We Got This Covered
Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby flirts with inspiration, but ultimately just goes to prove my longstanding point that slavish accuracy to source material never makes for wholly compelling cinema.
Full Review
| Original Score: 6/10
FilmDrunk
As Carraway's depicted in the movie, I can finally see why Hemingway thought Fitzgerald was such a pussy. Carraway is writer as observer-eunuch, the antithesis of Hemingway's phallus-brandishing lion killer.
Full Review
| Original Score: C+
2UE That Movie Show
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.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Irish Times
You don't watch Baz Luhrmann's detonation of F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby; you get beaten up by it
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
TheShiznit.co.uk
Luhrmann basically invites us to the world's greatest party, but it's one that slowly sours over the course of the following two hours.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Rip It Up
The biggest problem here is the quartet of Leo, Tobey, Carey and Joel stuck with such pain-in-the-arse characters. And all the amusingly anachronistic soundtracking, gorgeous production design and cinematic gloriousness can't make up for that, old sport.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Slant Magazine
When The Great Gatsby actually stops to breathe, there is some greatness to be found, however brief it may be.
The Ooh Tray
Why didn't the maestro didn't just go the whole hog and rename it "Jazz Hands: A Love Story"? A bottle of your best champagne says he thought about it.
Film School Rejects
This is another Baz Luhrmann film that fails to engage either the heart or the mind.
Full Review
| Original Score: D
Film Comment Magazine
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.
ComingSoon.net
Gatsby waivers and wanders, overblown and overdone and about twenty minutes too long.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/10
