The Great Gatsby

 F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” is considered by many as one of the most iconic books of all time, with its views on what the American Dream is, and the theory of repeating the past. While I can understand how most people would find that book to be a classic, I’m not one of them. I felt Fitzgerald’s execution of his ideas weren’t fully established and that they could have worked, if it wasn’t about how a man is so obsessed with a woman who’s now married to a racist womanizer, while her cousin just watches. That’s pretty much the synopsis of the book in my eyes.

There have been movie adaptations of the book before, but the one that I’m addressing is the latest one, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire. Much like “G.I. Joe Retaliation,” the new “Gatsby” film was pushed back, so it wouldn’t be in competition with the other DiCaprio film, “Django Unchained.” However, the question is was this worth the wait…absolutely not.

For the most part, the film does follow the book, as it tells of Nick Carraway, a Yale-graduate who moves to West Egg to study and become a writer, next door to Jay Gatsby. Across the bay is East Egg, where his cousin Daisy and her husband, Tom Buchanan, are living. After a visit to them, Nick meets Jordan Baker, and hears word about Gatsby, which Daisy seems familiar with the name. As time goes on, Nick meets Gatsby at one of his parties and the two become more acquainted with each other, as the mystery that surrounds Gatsby unravels the more Nick is around him. While I do think the concept that Fitzgerald had is interesting, the execution given in both the book and this movie fall flat, but the movie falls harder.

The first problem I have with the film is its pacing. For the first thirty minutes, they managed to cram in about the first fifty pages and it feels so rushed. It skims through conversations in certain scenes that it leaves you wondering what they’re even talking about. Instead, we get pointless montage moments that only pad out the movie to its almost two and half hour mark. Not only that, but the editing is simply atrocious, as there’s hardly a shot that lasts five seconds. For a big budget production, they don’t give the audience that much time to look at the hard work they put into the set designs and styles. It’s like they think the audience has ADD, and that’s just insulting.

The soundtrack is another thing that I find unappealing. It mostly full of rap and hip hop music, and doesn’t even fit the tone of where it’s put in the scenes it’s playing in. Don’t get me wrong, the idea isn’t bad, it’s just that it needs to be done in a way that works. Take for example “Django Unchained,” where it had music from Rick Ross and Tupac, and while their music isn’t the right time frame, Tarantino actually found a way to make it work. With “Gatsby,” it just feels like it was put there, just for the sake of having popular music there. At times, it had fitting jazz or orchestral music, so why couldn’t we just have that kept in there?

The cast in the film was nothing but a waste. Carey Mulligan was boring as Daisy, and it got to the point where her performance could actually cure insomnia; she was that bland. Joel Edgerton as Tom was just as unlikable as the character is in the book, but this time he’s more of a perverted punk than ever. Jason Clarke and Isla Fisher were SO forgettable as George and Myrtle Wilson, that it’s frustrating, especially since they’re both great talents. However, the worst actor throughout the entire film was Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby. He was AWEFUL in this movie! His smug attitude and presence deteriorates every second he’s on screen, that it officially marks this as his worst performance.

Surprisingly, the best part about this movie was Tobey Maguire as Nick Carraway. Despite having unnecessary narrations, Maguire really gives it his best, being a person who is the in-between of people like Gatsby and Tom. If everything else wasn’t as bad as it was in this film, I’d say this would be worth seeing just for his performance as Nick. However, due to all the other problems the film has, that isn’t the case.

The film was directed by Baz Luhrman, the same man behind “Moulin Rouge,” “Australia,” the DiCaprio version of “Romeo+Juliet,” all three films have marked him as one of the most pretentious directors working today. While “Gatsby” isn’t Luhrman’s worst film, that would be “Australia,” still doesn’t change the fact that he doesn’t know how to be a proper filmmaker.

Overall, Baz Luhrman’s “The Great Gatsby” by far one of the worst films of the year, and I’m guaranteeing that people will forget this film by the end of June, or at least the end of the year. Maguire was the only good part, DiCaprio was awful, the editing is garbage, the rest of the cast is useless, and the direction and cinematography is simply hard to deal with.

Rating: 2/10