10 for Fitzgerald. 5 for this remake

Rating: 5/10 (19 May 2013)

I loved the book as did everyone else, but as the age old advice heeds, "see this movie with an open mind." Well I did, and I can say that I am not so disappointed, it is okay, but just okay.
From the start it was hard to divorce the voice of the Nick Carraway from the nasal interpreter found in Tobey Maguire. I never imagined Nick Carraway as annoying, but Tobey Maguire certainly did inspire my want to reach into the screen and slap him for making the character into such a sullied bore. Though the opening sequences were okay enough, it was really the original work shining through the cracks that made this film entertaining. Sure the shots were beautiful, the CGI Mansion was large, and the parties at West Egg looked interesting, but this new film adaption made me wanting for something new, the exact feeling I had after watching Robert Redford's attempt.
Of course, Gatsby was like Titanic; you knew the ship was going into the drink, but DiCaprio had a harder challenge with Gatsby, because everyone knew what and who Gatsby was - unlike Jack Dawson. Perhaps that was Maguire's problem, being that he had such huge shoes to fill, frankly he was a very bad choice as this lead character. Maguire's attempt came off as yet another high school rendition of Shakespeare's best without the spider-man tights.
All of this is not to say that this film wasn't entertaining. In fact, as the credits began to roll the audience was captivated at its end. As the silence crept into peoples' awareness, that in fact, the movie had indeed ended, I wondered whether it was the book's echoed emotion that had gripped the movie-goers so much or this film. I did conclude rightly, that it was Fitzgerald's words that had stunned the theater, and not Baz Luhrmann. You can put a pig in a dress and apply lipstick, but you know it's just a pig. On the other hand, the strong base of this novel can give wings to any interpretation, good or just okay, and that is what this film is – another okay interpretation of a storied and favorite book (a modern book that does not age, unlike the modern film that gets dated and old). Ten stars for Fitzgerald, five stars for effort, and those stars all go to DiCaprio alone because Jay Gatsby came alive in DiCaprio's eyes, where Redford's didn't.