Not sure they needed to remake this but I am sure that JayZ was a totally inappropriate choice for the soundtrack. Beyond that it wasn't a bad movie and certainly looked better than the Robert Redford version.
I went on opening day. The Link But it didn't inspire me enough to rush home and write a review. The storyline, as presented, just wasn't very interesting to me. The modern music worked OK, but "Rhapsody in Blue" playing as the background for Gatsby's first appearance was probably the highlight of the movie for me. DiCaprio was well-cast and very good. I thought he was much more believable than Robert Redford was way back in 1974. That version seemed too much like "The Way We Were," Part 2. BTW, I always pictured Warren Beatty as Gatsby, until now. The rest of this Gatsby cast never had/got much to do in this fresh, flashy, fast paced flick, IMO. As FAST FRED, I could keep up the frenetic pace of this movie. But I think the director unfortunately zipped right through the story too quickly to do it much justice. I thought Carey Mulligan's Daisy always got the benefit here of too much screen-written sympathy, but I liked her better than Mia Farrow. And I've read elsewhere how Tobey Maguire was good, but I couldn't see it. If Scott Fitzgerald indeed resembled his Nick Carraway, I wouldn't have liked F. himself very much. Owen Wilson could have played the role, but that would have been "Midnight in Paris" again. My thought is: though I never read his book, I'd confidently expect that Fitzgerald's prose is more enjoyably readable than these moving pictures were moving, pictured in an emotional sense. No character was likable, but I think that was part of the point. I kept waiting for something meaningful to happen and, after something tragically did, I found the final denouement miswritten, misdirected or misplayed and unsatisfying. I appreciated Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge" and also "Australia," but found this flick pretty dull and droll storywise and not very worthwhile otherwise for me. I hope anybody else who wanted to dig it, dug it; however, this movie simply didn't work for me. Production Design, Visual Effects, Costume Design and the interesting Music (although I personally would have preferred '20s Jazz over Hip Hop) were the most awards-worthy things I witnessed. The party scenes, both those big shindigs at Gatsby's house and that early introductory tete-a-tete in a small hotel suite, seemed pretty tame to me. Heck, I thought the scandalous and criminal goings on at the wedding in "The Godfather" set up and served that story better. Some more female flesh flashing in the otherwise well-staged party peeks would have doubtless made them more believable to me. "Picnic" or "Seconds" or "The Conversation" or "Elmer Gantry" or even "Easy Rider" all had sexier party scenes without being skin fests. Hey, that the 1920s were happening right before my eyes without any bare titty at all was pretty unrealistic. So, overall (for my personal tastes), I found "The Great Gatsby" sorely lacking in either cinematic vision or its staged reality and I was disappointed. I guess Baz Luhrmann's color-saturated portrait of the Roaring Twenties just didn't roar loudly enough for me. You see, I'd always imagined that (except for all the bad stuff at the end like the stock market crashing and standing in bread lines) those were some pretty good times. However, in this movie, for me, they were scarcely worth a voyeuristic visit. JMO. Your thoughts?
20s were a good time for a few hedonists with no compunctions about profitting from or ignoring prohibition and it was a good time to be a practitioner of securities fraud. Parts of the society were freaked out over what happened in the war and others enjoying the profits reaped from the war. How do you keep them down on the farm once they've seen Paree? You don't. Lots of prolifigate living in the big cities. People like Gatsby thought there were no rules and no limits anymore. That, in part, is what the novel was about. Our own times aren't much different but with drugs instead of alcohol. Gatsby thought you could buy love just like you could buy good shirts.
Fitzgerald is one of my favorite authors and The Great Gatsby one of my all time favorite books. I look forward to the movie, but, honestly, it's not really a "movie" kind of story. There are several tremendous authors, old and recent, who's literature also translate into fantastic movies. Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice), Shakespeare (Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet), Tolstoy (Anna Karenina), Larry McMurtry (Last Picture Show, Lonesome Dove, Terms of Endearment), and Cormac McCarthy (No Country For Old Men). Gatsby just doesn't have that movie story. I also think it's hilarious that people have festive Gatsby themed parties. One friend had a Gatsby engagement party. I don't think they got to the end of the book.
I hated the book, I hated the Redford film, and I have no interest in seeing this incarnation. There's just not enough there. Maybe if I read the book now, at my age, I might like it. But I doubt it.
I found the visuals very distracting from the story. I mean yeah I like original art direction or whatever this is but it seems like the background was a watercolor painting or something. I mean if you were on a acid trip this would probably be a great movie to see. lol I found it hard to follow and i felt the director was trying way to hard to reinvent a classic story. I loved his incarnation of "Romeo and Juliet" also with Dicaprio but I just couldn't get into the Great Gatsby. I also didn't like Moulin Rouge either so I maybe it's just me. lol
I was in HS when the Redford version came out. My English class went on a field trip to watch it. When Gatsby got shot, all the guys started cheering.
Moulin Rouge?!? Thanks for bringing back the headache caused by THAT piece of ****. After that garbage, I can say that I will never see another Baz Luhrman film as long as I live.
BTW, saw a preview of "The Wolf of Wall Street," also starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese. Coming soon. My impression from what I saw was that it maybe could be subtitled: "A Greater Gatsby." And, for me, perhaps a better movie.
