REVIEW - 'The Great Gatsby'

'The Great Gatsby' (PG-13) **3/4

The Great American Novel (and Great American SparkNotes) that I kinda read in high school and will be reading again soon.  Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) has entered into a sanitarium, and soon starts recollecting to his doctor and starts writing down about when he moved out east and became entranced by the lifestyle of and involved in the dealings of his mysterious wealthy neighbor Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio).  Nick also becomes an observer in a plot that involves his mysterious neighbor, but also Gatsby's former love Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan, from 'Drive', 'Wall Street:  Money Never Sleeps', and 'An Education') who happens to be Nick's cousin, her husband Tom (Joel Edgerton, from 'Warrior' and 'Star Wars Episode II'), Tom's mistress Myrtle (Isla Fisher, from 'Wedding Crashers') and Myrtle's husband George (Jason Clarke, from 'Lawless' and 'Zero Dark Thirty')

I haven't seen any other version of 'Great Gatsby', so I can't really compare this to any of those.  But comparing this to the book (and to the SparkNotes), the movie is fairly faithful to the source material.  The movie is visually fantastic.  The cast does a fairly good job of playing the characters and acting of the time period in which the movie is set, but the main performance I have to point out is Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby.  It's a great performance and in my opinion one of his better roles, up there with the evil plantation owner Calvin Candie in 'Django Unchained' and as Dom Cobb in 'Inception'.  

But there are some things that just didnt really work for me.  Towards the beginning of the movie the dialogue felt fast-paced, clunky, forced, and unnatural.  Eventually this problem faded and everything sounded more natural.  Another was the soundtrack.  As the commercials and trailers have suggested, this does have a hip-hop/rap soundtrack that accompanies the various party scenes at Gatsby's.  Heck, Jay-Z is even an executive producer for the movie.  While I can understand to a extent why hip-hop/rap was placed in the movie as a way to connect the fame/excess/party scene of today to how it was in the Roaring 20's, it just felt out of place and awkward.  I don't mind music that's anachronistic (which will be brought up later) provide it that just flows well.  The last main criticism I have is the length of the movie, clocking in at 2 hours, 23 minutes.  Some scenes could have been cut down a little bit, and after going through the chopping block it would still be a solid movie at around 2 hours, maybe a little bit over.

This was directed by Baz Luhrmann, who also directed 'Romeo + Juliet' (also starring DiCaprio), 'Moulin Rouge!', and 'Australia'.  Out of those I've only seen 'Moulin Rouge!', and just like in that movie (as stated earlier), 'Gatsby' is great to look at.  It fully does look and feel like a stylized version of the Roaring 20's.  And turning the tables a little bit, 'Moulin Rouge!' also has anachronistic music, but it flows well.  'Moulin Rouge!' is a musical set in the late 1890s in Paris, yet such songs like 'The Sound of Music', 'Like A Virgin', 'Roxanne', 'Lady Marmalade', 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' and even 'All You Need Is Love' all pop up in it at some point.  Why do I feel that 'Moulin Rouge!' can get away with it and not 'Gatsby'?  I guess it just falls under if I felt that it worked or not for me.  Random songs from random genres being blended together in a musical works better for me than rap music in a movie about the 1920's.  Though with a theme of the movie being a perversion of the American Dream I suppose rap could fit under that...if it wasn't set in the 1920's.

I saw this in 2D, and it still looked fantastic.  Most 3D movies in 2D have at least some things that still try and pop out on the screen to show that this was meant for 3D, and to an extent 'Gatsby' is no exception.  At times in Nick's narration words taken directly from the book pop up on screen as they are being spoken, and the parties and fireworks could look cool in 3D, but they were perfectly fine in 2D.  Do I feel like I should have seen it in 3D?  No.  It was perfectly fine in 2D, and something like 'The Great Gatsby' doesn't need to be in 3D.  Or have rap music.

Overall old sport, the movie has great visuals, an out-of-place soundtrack and a great performance from DiCaprio.  I recommend it to anyone who is at least familiar with the book, or if you're just a fan of Leonardo DiCaprio.