The Great Gatsby

Baz Luhrmann repeats what he did with Rome + Juliet and creates a horrible moster full of FX and exaggeration. Still, the cast performs well.

An over the top portrayal of the classic novel, while at times excessive and tasteless, it truly hits home with the novels original critique on the excess of the time. The cast was excellent, the movie stayed true to the novel in all the most important ways. I personally feel the modern soundtrack wasn't appropriate in several cases, but a couple flawless executions.

See I don't know how to review this because I came into it hating the novel, and it's 2022, it took me over a decade to finally say "fine I'll watch the movie." And unfortunately they didn't improve things. It's still, well, pretentious. It's still a story of someone that is living above his means, and living a very shallow life, that the audience is supposed to relate to enough to either like or dislike him... ... and I just never could. Holden Claufield was pretentious, but the magic of the Catcher in the Rye is that everyone could relate to him in some way, everyone could connect in some way, even if you ultimately didn't like him. Jay Gatsby, you can't really relate to him. The best description for him is a false prophet, at least the most apt description of him is a false prophet... and that isn't a relatable protagonist. That isn't the sort of character that most people can connect with. And it carried over into this film. It's hard to get into the novel when the protagonist is unrelatable, and just as hard to get into the film. But, at the same time, it's done beautifully and Leo did nail the part. In fact, all the acting was pretty great.