The Great Gatsby sucks

[Hammock Parties]

.

The trailers for this made it seem like the greatest thing EVER.

Now topping out at 42%

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_great_gatsby_2012/

Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby" is a tale told idiotically, full of noise and furor, signifying next to nothing.

The production is not insipid, let's give it that. An exercise in absurdist excess, this fourth screen adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, with Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role, means to dramatize the excesses of the Jazz Age, with hints of Weimar decadence thrown in for bad measure.

But that's a banality by this late date, and it's as far as Mr. Luhrmann goes in making sense of the book. The film's only governing principle is maximalism—everything has been made as big as possible, apart from conversational interludes, when big feelings are displayed, like bullet points, by actors striking static poses.

What's intractably wrong with the film is that there's no reality to heighten; it's a spectacle in search of a soul. For all of its glittery fragmentation, "Moulin Rouge!" came around to moments of genuine passion. None of these new trappings means a thing because the people who populate them are stylish sticks, unsinged by the spark of life.

That's almost surely not the fault of the actors, for the director turns them into lifelike props. Mr. DiCaprio, who's no more comfortable with the phrase "old sport" than Robert Redford was in the previous version, is elaborately sincere when he isn't frowning like Jack Nicholson; being charming like, well, Leonardo DiCaprio, or being mysterious, except that people who are genuinely mysterious don't look mysterious. Carey Mulligan's Daisy is either languorous or amorous, not a lot in between. Mr. Maguire's Nick is cheerlessly impressionable. Joel Edgerton's Tom is charmlessly brutish. Elizabeth Debicki's Jordan Baker is a flouncing cipher. And Mr. Luhrmann uses Amitabh Bachchan, a legendary star in his native India, to make the Jewish gangster Meyer Wolfshiem a leering pillowbiterin.

Given the lifelessness of the enterprise, there's little point in belaboring its failure to convey the novel's themes, let alone the emotional and social resonance of what has come to be considered a masterpiece of world literature. Although the hero created himself out of the whole cloth of romantic yearning, we see almost nothing of that self-creation, only the conflicted result. Although the Nick of the novel arrives at a new and tragic understanding of the American Dream, the Nick on screen can't be more than an earnest observer, since any vestige of the story's tragic sense has been replaced by melodramatic sadness.

This dreadful film even derogates the artistry of Fitzgerald, who wrote "The Great Gatsby" while living on Long Island and in Europe. In a deviation from the book that amounts to a calumny against literary history, Nick, the author's surrogate, is discovered in a psychiatric hospital where, as an aging alcoholic, he struggles to comprehend the vanished figure at the center of the long-ago story, and finally completes his treatment by writing the novel. It's literature as therapy, and Gatsby as Rosebud.

[KChiefer]

Originally Posted by DoucheMcCloud

So J. Edgar is a bad film but you haven't seen it?

It's rocking a 44% on RT. Ebert liked it though. The casting was just weird to me. Take a guy in his 30s and slap a bunch of make-up on him so he's 20-30 years older is just fail.

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by KC_Connection

I've heard good things about his performances in those, but never seen them.

They're both very good films although neither are the kind of films I gravitate towards. I like dramas but I definitely have to be in the right mood, or forget it.

[KC_Connection]

Originally Posted by KC native

Only two. The ship sinks and Leo's character dies.

Just hating on Jack Dawson.

Really, some of the greatest movies of all time involve love stories. You're missing out there.

[KC native]

Originally Posted by KC_Connection

Just hating on Jack Dawson.

Really, some of the greatest movies of all time involve love stories. You're missing out there.

I'm just hating on Titanic. I ****ing hate that movie with a passion.

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by KChiefer

It's rocking a 44% on RT. Ebert liked it though. The casting was just weird to me. Take a guy in his 30s and slap a bunch of make-up on him so he's 20-30 years older is just fail.

It's a well done film, albeit, slow. Eastwood's an amazing director and composer and DiCaprio is totally convincing. In the end, I just don't think the subject matter is all that interesting to today's audience.

I feel the same way about J. Edgar as I do Good Night and Good Luck. The latter was a very good film as well (with six Oscar noms) but it's really hard for me to sit through period piece dramas.

Now, L.A. Confidential on the other hand, I could watch every week.

[KChiefer]

Originally Posted by KC native

I liked the Beach. It wasn't the greatest movie ever but was still a good movie IMO.

I saw it once, was pretty meh about it. Just, if someone said they'd never seen Titanic or The Beach, I'd recommend Titanic.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Has any Baz Luhrmann film not been an overly elaborate spectacle meant for fans of musicals?

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by KChiefer

What classic literature has been put on screen with great success in the last say 20 years? I'm having a hard time thinking of many.

Hitchhiker's Guide, which I haven't read but I know many love only got 60% on RT.

LOTR

There Will Be Blood which wasn't even Sinclair's most famous novel.

You may laugh but Fight Club and American Psycho were both excellent adaptations. Palahniuk said he preferred the film's ending to the book's.

[KC_Connection]

Originally Posted by DoucheMcCloud

It's a well done film, albeit, slow. Eastwood's an amazing director and composer and DiCaprio is totally convincing. In the end, I just don't think the subject matter is all that interesting to today's audience.

I feel the same way about J. Edgar as I do Good Night and Good Luck. The latter was a very good film as well (with six Oscar noms) but it's really hard for me to sit through period piece dramas.

Now, L.A. Confidential on the other hand, I could watch every week.

I liked Good Night and Good Luck. Very well done. Probably Clooney's best effort as a director and Strathairn was great as Murrow.

L.A. Confidential is obviously a great film, one of the best from that decade. Entertaining every time I see it.

[Demonpenz]

Baz Luhrmann says his movies aren'tfor fat people and that he seeks the "In" crowd to see Gatsby

[Demonpenz]

His movie Australia is the second leading grossing Australian movie behind Crocidile Dundee...so there's that.

[KChiefer]

Originally Posted by DoucheMcCloud

It's a well done film, albeit, slow. Eastwood's an amazing director and composer and DiCaprio is totally convincing. In the end, I just don't think the subject matter is all that interesting to today's audience.

I feel the same way about J. Edgar as I do Good Night and Good Luck. The latter was a very good film as well (with six Oscar noms) but it's really hard for me to sit through period piece dramas.

Now, L.A. Confidential on the other hand, I could watch every week.

I didn't know Eastwood directed it. That does bode well for it. I never saw GNaGL either, but I did see Frost/Nixon eventually, and it too was slow, but it was good, though I'd never need to watch it again.

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by KChiefer

I didn't know Eastwood directed it. That does bode well for it. I never saw GNaGL either, but I did see Frost/Nixon eventually, and it too was slow, but it was good, though I'd never need to watch it again.

I haven't seen Frost/Nixon but it's on the list. It was on one of the premium channels recently and I forgot to record it.

I'm expecting it to be similar in nature to Good Night and Good Luck and J. Edgar: Movies that I need to see, just to see them, but they won't likely be favorites or added to the DVD/Ultraviolet collection.

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins

Has any Baz Luhrmann film not been an overly elaborate spectacle meant for fans of musicals?

Yeah, that pretty much nails it. I'm a huge fan of theater and musicals, having seen dozens on Broadway and at the Pantages in Los Angeles, but movie musicals just don't interest me.

I can't really explain it but there's something about being in the audience, where the actors not only react to each other but to the audience as well, that can't be duplicated on film.

At least IMHO.

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by KChiefer

It's rocking a 44% on RT.

With all due respect, I completely disregard websites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic because they're often initially wrong. Some of the greatest movies ever made were initially panned hard by critics, only to go on to be revered by later generations and regarded as classics of cinema. (The same can be said about music as well but that's a different subject entirely).

I'd prefer to actually watch a film for myself and come to my own conclusion before dismissing it outright.