Almost an insult to Fitzgerald

Rating: 5/10 (22 December 2013)

One of the most beautiful masterpieces of American literature has been unfairly mistreated here, one more time, as Hollywood and literature don't match often. Jesus Christ, whose idea was to cast Tobey Maguire for the role of Nick Carraway? I was just looking to Spiderman all the time, a funny character, childish, and sometimes plain idiotic. It only takes to read one page of the Fitzgerald's book to realize that Nick was a very serious man, almost depressed (as it was Gatsby, being both of them Fitzgerald's alter egos). This is a book about sadness, about the depression that plagued that period in American history. Fitzgerald was one of the most prominent exponents of the Lost Generation, and that's the feeling that the book conveys in a masterful way. This movie, however, looks for the most part (especially the first half of the movie) just like another fancy Hollywood movie, made with the intention to be a blockbuster and nothing else.
The entrance of Gatsby was vague and plain, diminished in front of the background paraphernalia. I can even tolerate the modern electronic music, but all those computer generated scenarios with the fancy camera movements a la Disney are just ridiculous. And of course, you have the speed, the very short shots that don't allow for a meaningful grasp of the situations and the characters.
There are some achievements, however, like some of the acting (I don't think De Caprio is that terrible, is just the entire thing what makes him look not convincing at times) and the girls are OK, as well as Buchanan and other minor characters. The visuals are sometimes pretty good and interesting, if you take off the Disney like stuffs. I understand that the director wanted to do something different, something ironic and postmodern, in the line of Moulin Rouge, but I think that it is just a failure to go that way with this literary masterpiece. It just falls very short, and does not make any justice to the stature of Fitzgerald.