Great Ambition for Great Gatsby

Rating: 6/10 (10 June 2013)

Look, this film is one that is going to be divisive. Baz Lurhrmann is known to have critics before he undertook this film, with his lavish style either being loved or hated. One would suggest then, that with F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jazz Age classic, Lurhrmann would dovetail perfectly, right? Not quite. The film certainly does have some pizazz, and while I don't personally agree with the Jay Z music influence, I don't dispute that the film certainly had ambition.
The cast does its best to bring the novel to life, with Tobey Maguire a good choice as passive Nick, and Leo DiCaprio a Robert Redford reminiscent Jay Gatsby, but Carrie Mulligan and Joel Edgerton just a little bit too 'sympathetic' in their portrayal of the Buchannan's, which although not detracting from the film, leaves some of the novel uncaptured.
As a reader of the book, I felt that the film tried really hard to capture important thematic concerns, but what let it down was that it tried too hard to point them out, as if trying to prove to the audience how clever this was. Sometimes, I found this annoying, as it peeled back the Gatsby mystery too early, and made him seem too fake, when we shouldn't really find this out until the end.
All in all, this film tries to be something that it isn't, almost reminiscent of the sad figure of Jay Gatsby himself. The plot still holds well, and you can't argue that they didn't try.