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.

[bevischief]

Originally Posted by KCtotheSB

Hated reading that shitty book in high school.

This.

[blaise]

That book is a great book.

[mnchiefsguy]

This is the movie that officially jumps the shark for 3D. It better make its money this weekend (I doubt it will), because Star Trek is going to take over all of those 3D screens next week.

[underEJ]

Originally Posted by mnchiefsguy

This is the movie that officially jumps the shark for 3D. It better make its money this weekend (I doubt it will), because Star Trek is going to take over all of those 3D screens next week.

I'll see the 3D Gatsby, and I hate musicals generally on Broadway or on film, but like Baz Luhrmann. Strictly Ballroom is hilarious. Romeo + Juliet is bold and stylish and breaks just the right rules. Moulin Rouge is my least favorite of the three because it just went too far, but it wasn't bad. I will give Gatsby a chance though I do wonder about the book coming through. Holding opinion until I see it.

There are so few real 3D movies. Star Trek is converted. Save your money.

[L.A. Chieffan]

it was one of those movies only smart people will like. I thought it was fantastic.

[Reaper16]

It wasn't the flaming shitpile I expected it to be. Pretty average movie. Heavy-handed as **** though. Leo was pretty awesome at least.

[kc rush]

Shawn Edwards loved it. That is enough for me to know to avoid it.

[Red Brooklyn]

Originally Posted by Reaper16

It wasn't the flaming shitpile I expected it to be. Pretty average movie. Heavy-handed as **** though. Leo was pretty awesome at least.

Leo was awesome, as was Mulligan. I liked Tobey a lot more than I expected to also. His scene work was nice. His voice-over stuff was weird.

But I really liked the movie. Many have criticized Baz for his MTV-style directing. This, to me, was way more MET Opera than MTV. Bold choices, and I could see why people wouldn't like/respond well to them. But it was consistent and I really had a blast watching the thing.

[DJJasonp]

I liked it.....but I thought luhrmans Romeo and Juliet was brilliant. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

I also liked moulin rouge too....but Australia was awfully boring

[Halfcan]

150 million dollar bomb. The reviews were horrendous.

[Bowser]

My daughter saw it and was pretty meh about it. Even she, a junior in high school, thought the rap music was way out of place for the movie. Definitely didn't get a recommendation from her.

[Setsuna]

Originally Posted by Bowser

My daughter saw it and was pretty meh about it. Even she, a junior in high school, thought the rap music was way out of place for the movie. Definitely didn't get a recommendation from her.

What does a child know really? That's a horrible review.

[Frazod]

Originally Posted by Setsuna

What does a child know really? That's a horrible review.

Apparently she knows that rap sucks shit and has no place in a movie about the ****ING 1920S.

[Bump]

Originally Posted by Rausch

We'll all be waiting to kill you.

Taste this bad demands a lynching...

racist

[Bowser]

Originally Posted by Setsuna

What does a child know really? That's a horrible review.

She knows more about how to put together a movie than you do, apparently.