Disappointing, Unfortunately

Rating: 5/10 (26 December 2013)

The Great Gatsby is a film directed by Baz Luhrmann, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan. It centres around the character of Nick Carraway(Maguire), a man who has moved to New York to take up a job as a bond salesman. He finds himself neighbour to a man known as Jay Gatsby(DiCaprio), who holds extravagant, wonderful parties every weekend. Carraway becomes friends with Gatsby, and is asked by the man to fulfill a set of tasks to help him with his love life.
Baz Luhrmann is no stranger to extravagance. Moulin Rouge is a perfect example of this. He loves to make energetic, wonderful films, which are certainly exaggerated to the maximum. The Great Gatsby is no exception. Luhrmann delivers us a film which adheres to all of his traits, and brings lots of colour to the screen. He certainly creates a visually pleasing film here. The parties that take place within this film are all wild, huge and colourful. Talk about stylistic! Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy all the visual effects that he implemented, and wish that maybe the film could have been toned down slightly. The whole scale of it makes it hard for you to absorb yourself in these characters and their motivations, which makes for a less than rounded film experience.
The performances are all fairly decent. DiCaprio certainly steals the show, as he has a subtle energy about him which contrasts against the loud and obnoxious characters that surround him. Whilst his character isn't written very well, I found that I enjoyed watching him on screen. Tobey Maguire gave a more neutral performance. I personally can't stand him doing voice overs as his voice is just too... boring! He stays consistently uninteresting for the majority of the film, as does Carey Mulligan. Her character is written poorly, and her performance doesn't help. She's incredibly one dimensional, sappy, predictable and plain annoying. I just couldn't help but cringe every time she was on screen. The ensemble, on the other hand, is fairly good. Joel Edgerton gives a wonderful performance, as does Isla Fisher. For the most part, the performances won't disappoint you.
The whole pace of the film is incredibly slow. The film starts off energetically, with Maguire's character getting into the details of his story quickly and efficiently. It's from there that the film goes from fast and fun, to slow and sappy. The love story that emerges was so silly and boring that I just couldn't help but lose interest. By the end of the film, none of these characters had me engaged. The Great Gatsby starts off incredibly promising, but slowly turns into a predictable, unexciting, at times corny film.
In summary, I was certainly disappointed by the result of this film. I enjoyed the first half immensely. It was Baz Luhrmann at his finest, and it showed promise for the rest of the running time. But the final half of the film really lost my interest, and had me cringing at multiple points in time. Whilst the performances were acceptable, the writing was not. I haven't read the book, and based on this, I'm not going to be any time soon. It's a basic, stupid love story, which could've been so much more. It's not one of the worst of the year, but it's certainly over-hyped.
5.6/10