A Midwestern war veteran finds himself drawn to the past and lifestyle of his millionaire neighbor.
Luhrmann’s film, which opens the Cannes Film Festival tomorrow evening before arriving in British cinemas on Thursday, is the Gatsby that Gatsby himself would have made, and you can hear the director’s voice whenever DiCaprio speaks.
Luhrmann’s Great Gatsby might not find favour with all Fitzgerald purists but it plunges you wholeheartedly into an age of bathtub gin, flirty flappers and impending doom and burns with a fierce intensity.
Luhrmann’s take on Fitzgerald’s tale may be the blockbuster version that the times require. His 1996 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, remember, attracted numberless teenagers to Shakespeare’s text for the first time. If his Gatsby leads a new generation of viewers back to the book, then so much the better.
This is a movie whose adjective is unearned. It's a flashy Gatsby, a sighing Gatsby, an angry Gatsby, a celeb Gatsby. But not a great one.
Feels all dressed up with nowhere to go in comparison. Yet the trappings are stunning, with sumptuous evocations of 1920’s New York and the West and East Egg social scene that dazzle and beguile even as the narrative fizzles out.
Though it’s not the definitive Gatsby movie, Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation is arguably the best attempt to capture F. Scott Fitzgerald’s enduring novel on screen thus far.
Baz Luhrmann’s Gatsby is so full of spectacle that it risks missing the point of Fitzgerald’s story.
Luhrmann’s stylised visuals course through the story, spilling out of the screen in an orgy of colour when depicting people’s excess but clouding over with threatening gloom for scenes of a more sinister intensity.
After the frenetic, delirious excess of Moulin Rouge, The Great Gatsby suggests the work of a more focused director whose penchant for extravagant chaos is carefully controlled, so it is never allowed to overwhelm the delicate, tender romance at the film's centre.
There’s no faulting the ambition and lavish execution of the first literary summer blockbuster.
This Gatsby isn't great, or even close to it.
Despite DiCaprio’s prize performance, purists will fume, but even as lit-crashing razzle-dazzle entertainment Luhrmann’s adaptation is a candelabrum too far.
One is left with the horrible suspicion that Luhrmann's remake of The King's Speech would involve fire-breathing jugglers, a thousand screaming drag queens and a million rampaging wildebeest.
When the party is over and all of the guests have left, we're supposed to see how depressingly soulless it had been, not wish to return there.
Like Gatsby himself, the film is insubstantial, incomplete and unwholesome but beautifully executed and it’s a very guilty pleasure to have his company while it lasts.
There’s much to admire in the sweep of this Gatsby, but much to resent as well. This is a young adult fiction Gatsby for the inattentive.
Good and bad in parts, but mainly a misconceived venture. Luhrmann is a cheerful vulgarian and his movie suggestive of Proust directed by Michael Winner.
Heads up: Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby
'The Great Gatsby': Baz Lurhmann's co-writer on the story behind the film
General release. Check local listings for show times.
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