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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.
Critic 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.
All Critics (276) | Top Critics (52) | Fresh (134) | Rotten (142) | 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.
Just because a film looks like it was dipped in 18-karat gold doesn't mean it's rich in quality
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.
Each time one of the story's main characters is introduced, there's a pregnant pause to tell the audience we're meeting someone important here.
Feels less like a literate attempt to translate Fitzgerald to the screen than it does the moonshine-induced fever dream of a crazed wino who drifted to sleep with a crumpled copy of the book clutched to his chest.
This is fantastically enjoyable, and a blast. It is wild and rampant and thrilling. It's the best film I've seen since the last best film I saw, whatever and whenever that was.
Its boat too often rides along the current, borne safely into mediocrity.
When the crucial moment of the story comes, it feels emotionally stunted and unrelated to anything that has passed.
It is not the novel, no, but happy to report, the madly embattled result is a real movie.
Visually stunning, as expected with Luhrmann, to the degree of a somewhat artificial look. That works for this film, though and makes for a very unique atmosphere. Thankfully, the interesting characters and their actors are not held back by all the pomp, although the film does remain somewhat superficial compared to the novel. But especially the end is really well delivered.
Super Reviewer
A very faithful adaptation that, with all its glamorous costume and production design, overstylized visuals and anachronistic music that only add to it, proves to be a surprisingly riveting experience and lives up to the good novel that inspired it.
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.
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.
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