The Great Gatsby

Cast of Characters:
Jay Gatsby - Leonardo DiCaprio
Nick Carraway - Tobey Maguire
Daisy Buchanan - Carey Mulligan
Tom Buchanan - Joel Edgerton
Myrtle Wilson - Isla Fisher
George Wilson - Jason Clarke

Director - Baz Luhrmann
Screenplay - Baz Luhrmann & Craig Pearce
Based on the novel “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Rated PG-13 for some violent images, sexual content, smoking, partying and brief language

      F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” is one of the most beloved literary classics of the twentieth century, perfectly capturing the excess of the Roaring Twenties. Up until this year, the novel has been adapted four times for film, the most recent being in 2000 for television, and the most well known being the 1974 version starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. Now, in 2013, we have the fifth film adaptation of Fitzgerald’s classic.

      The film opens with Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire), a Yale University graduate and World War I veteran, receiving treatment in a sanitarium for depression and alcoholism. He constantly refers to a man known as Gatsby to his doctor. Since he finds it hard to articulate his thoughts, his doctor recommends writing it down in a diary.

      We then flashback to 1922. Nick has moved from the Midwest to New York to take a job as a bond salesman. He rents a small Long Island house in the village of West Egg, next door to a mansion owned by Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), a mysterious businessman who's always throwing outlandish parties. Across the bay in East Egg lives Nick’s cousin Daisy Buchanan (Carey Mulligan) and her husband Tom (Joel Edgerton).

      Over time, Gatsby and Nick meet, become friends, and it soon comes to Nick's attention that both Gatsby and Daisy were once romantically linked. Gatsby's still madly in love with Daisy, but she's naturally moved on over the years - or has she? Both her and Gatsby's interaction with each other comes at much displeasure to Tom, despite the fact that he himself is involved in an extramarital affair with a feisty bombshell named Myrtle Wilson (Isla Fisher) who lives in the "Valley of Ashes", an industrial dumping ground in between West Egg and New York City.

      There obviously have been a number of film adaptations throughout the decades, but none have a worse track record than Fitzgerald's Magnum Opus. If you intend on watching the Robert Redford 1974 version, plan on taking a couple Adderall to stay awake. Leave it to writer/director Baz Luhrmann to continue that streak. His 1996 adaptation of the great William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" was, in my opinion, one of the most horrendous films of not just that year, but of the 90's in general . While The Great Gatsby's not the travesty that Romeo + Juliet was, this film is still riddled with flaws. Look no further than Baz Luhrmann for the root cause. The art direction is over the top. Why the hell they'd even consider filming this in 3D is beyond me. The soundtrack featuring the likes of Jay Z, Amy Winehouse, Fergie, and Beyonce seems completely out of place given the time period the story is set in, and as great as some of the performances may be, it's just talent wasted and buried underneath too much style. Besides, no matter how bad the film may be, would you expect anything less from DiCaprio? He's undeniably one of the greatest actors out of his generation if not the best. Joel Edgerton is a fine actor himself, and turned in some solid supporting work in Zero Dark Thirty, but here he seems miscast in the role of Tom Buchanan. The films greatest flaw though is the completely unnecessary story arc of Nick Carraway narrating the story from the sanitarium. Luhrmann is clearly no stranger to taking risks within film. Setting Romeo + Juliet in present day, yet still using the Elizabethan language was a rather big one. If you think setting Nick in the looney bin is a bit of a stretch, wait 'til you see when the words Nick writes pop out on screen and float toward you.

      To its credit, I guarantee come awards season next year The Great Gatsby will earn a Costume Design Oscar nomination, which it deserves. That being said, other than the beautiful costume design by Catherine Martin and a few solid performances from DiCaprio, Maguire and Mulligan, this is still one hell of a disappointment considering the source material and the talented cast involved. "The Great Gatsby" is terrific story that doesn't need all the distracting flash and flare that Luhrmann throws at the screen. While it certainly won't be the worst film of the year, you can possibly chalk this up to the year's biggest disappointment. I give The Great Gatsby a D+ (★½).