The Great Gatsby

            Warning: I have not read 'The Great Gatsby' nor did I know anything about it going into the weekend.  My small rural school did not make it required reading nor did my 20 year fantasy/sci-fi bender slow down long enough for me to catch up on what is widely considered to be an American Classic.  For better or for worse, I will be judging the movie as a movie.

           

            On to the review!

            The first thing I have to say about The GreatGatsby is centered on the director, Baz Luhrmann.  He directed one movie I love to watch when I need to shut my brain up, Moulin Rouge, and another movie that I don't mind at all, Romeo+ Juliet.  He has a very, shall we say, distinct style in that everything he does is incredibly loud and bright as fuck.  There is not a single color in the goddamn spectrum visible by birds that Baz has failed to use in his films.  He is a bright, ostentatious, over-the-top sort of guy.

            This is fine for a movie like Moulin Rouge where even when things get serious the film deliberately relies on overacting, melodramatics and ridiculousness.  It is not, however, fine for a film that involves any sort of subtlety.

            The Great Gatsby is a narrative within a narrative.  It is told from the point of view of Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) who has moved to New York City to try his hand at the stock market.  He rents a tiny cabin in a very ritzy area, which puts him right next to Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio).  Gatsby happens to throw giant parties every weekend, where a veritable who's-who of New Yorkers show up just to get drunk and revel.  Eventually, Nick is invited and ends up befriending Gatsby, impressed by his kindness and honesty.  Little does Nick realize, however, that Gatsby has an ulterior motive.

            For those of you who have not read the book, I do not want to spoil anything else, as it is a decent story.  For those of you who have read the book, you don't need me to tell you what happens next. What you want to know is, is it worth paying money to see this adaptation? 

            No, no it is not.

            Here's why:  While the party scenes are most definitely Baz Luhrmann (loud, ostentatious, over-the-top) the rest of the movie suffers under his heavy hand.  The bright colors may be useful for the bright scenes, but when the script turns dark he has no idea what to do.  Even during some of the most dramatic moments one cannot help but laugh at how ridiculously cartoonish the entire world looks.  It's almost as if he tried to recreate the set of Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

            On top of that, the characters are given a little bit too much free reign to overact.  While DiCaprio again amazes me with his acting ability, Tobey Maguire falls flat a few times, giving the wrong faces for the wrong scenes.  While he makes up for it towards the end, the middle part is frustratingly difficult to put up with.  The same goes for Carey Mulligan as his cousin Daisy Buchanan.  Both her and Joel Edgerton (as Daisy's rich husband, Tom Buchanan) are caricatures of people.  It's downright frustrating to watch.

            Then there's the soundtrack.  While his mix of old and new worked great in Moulin Rouge his attempts at recreating that same sound here are laughably terrible.  Rather than modernize that amazing 20's sound, Baz went and took all the new rap, hip-hop and rock he could find and tried to cram it into a 20's setting.  No, throwing in a jazz trumpet does not automatically make something sound old-school. 

            Basically, The Great Gatsby is a giant mess.  Overwrought, overdramatic, overacted, overmusic'd (that's a thing now), over colored and overly ostentatious.  I think I'm gonna go read the book now.