Frustratingly poor.

Rating: 3/10 (16 May 2013)

I've not walked out of a lot of movies, but I've seen enough to know one worth leaving before the ending. I stayed right the way through Gatsby to see if it really was this poor, right to the end. It was.
Before the story-line, the casting, the soundtrack, screenplay and photography all mash together to ruin the rest of the film, it is already bruised by needless 3D. This complete headache of a movie was remedied only slightly when I removed the specs after the first ten minutes. Nearly impossible to watch, completely unnecessary.
So we're on the back foot already, and Luhrmann hasn't even dropped Jay-Z and Kanye West over a 1920s New York crane-shot yet. Before long, you're thrown some dub-step for absolutely no apparent reason. The list goes on, and becomes even more frustrating the more 'Now 83' is piped over the screenplay. This is supposed to be an epic tale of grandeur, love, greed and jealousy. Where's the orchestra? This story deserves a score, not a pop chart.
The theme of laziness continues with the editing. Lip-sync quality is sporadic, there are times when DiCaprio's speech is cut at the beginning so you can't understand his sentence. Where tension could be built with music and proper acting, we have scenes with characters just breathing at one another.
My three stars go to the only actor worth casting for a role in this movie; Joel Edgerton. He excelled where the rest of the entire cinema experience collapsed, in 3D, around him.