Fine Fluff, but a thoroughly unremarkable adaptation

Rating: 5/10 (8 October 2013)

The Great Gatsby (Luhrmann, 2013, C+)
There is enough good here to make the miscalculations (and a few of them are colossal miscalculations) even more apparent. However, the film has a few virtues. One is DiCaprio, who gives a usual sturdy performance, even if it only ranks near the middle of the best work. Also, the film's back half is much stronger than it's opening. It's the best screen Gatsby to yet be made, but it's still only a little better than half way there.
Here's the real issue, though: Luhrmann labors under the delusion that GATSBY is a love story between a man and a woman and not a love story between a man and a dream. He takes a source rich with symbol and metaphor and creates a distressingly literal adaptation. His camera wings gleefully through party after party, luxuriating in the decadence of these mansions. He is in love with the excesses of the roaring twenties. He makes the exact film that Gatsby the character would want made about himself and in doing so bypasses richer thematic avenues. To borrow a phrase from both the novel and film versions, Luhrmann is far too occupied with his count of enchanted objects.