decontextualized "fun" like pulling the wings off flies

Rating: 3/10 (14 January 2014)

well filmed, per the usual for Scorcese, funny in parts, but that's part of the problem, funny ha ha about massive greed and addiction?? The story is a mess as well, you really don't know why things are illegal, people really don't, on screen, suffer much from their addictions, there is little here that balances the celebratory with the downside so you never really get a sense of the actual consequences, in other words, the artistic message is muddled, characters come and go. Mostly we are shown a wonderful world of luxury with little real irony, no matter the feeble attempts to show the "downside." And what about the shipwreck??? that's a whole story in itself, yet it's treated like a lark. Maybe it's all suppose to be a cartoon fantasy, but this reeks of obtuseness given the massive inequalities in the US. Strange misfire from Scorcese.