A huge disappointment!

Rating: 3/10 (19 May 2013)

Those who like the director's quixotic approach will no doubt have enjoyed this film, but to me it seemed incoherent and lacking character development. The only genuine character seems to be Nick Carraway; everyone else, including Gatsby, seems a caricature, not a real person. I was immediately annoyed by the thumping rap music which Luhrmann inserted, instead of using original 1920s music, presumably to appeal to younger audiences. The whole effect of this was to remove realism and inject surrealism - it just didn't work. Similarly, the surreal rapid close-ups didn't add anything meaningful either. When watching this film, the whole impression was not one of following the storyline of a great novel, but rather of being constantly bombarded by a mosaic of incoherent and haphazard images, without any clear context. Gatsby seemed to be a nonentity, just a pawn in some mysterious chess game completely outside his control. Di Caprio, a superb actor at his best, was simply not given the opportunity to show his talents and develop the character; he muddled his way through the role as best he could. Carey Mulligan was awkward and unconvincing as Daisy. Tobey Maguire and Joel Edgerton clearly came out as the best actors - Maguire was particularly impressive as the dazzled Carraway.
In summary, I didn't feel that this movie was the right vehicle for Luhrmann, who is more suited to direct fantasies than screen adaptations of great novels. His visual pyrotechnics failed to impress me.