The Great Gatsby

Putting the visuals as top and only priority will never work in a film. It's a similar problem that made me so disappointed with Oz as to how much work was done on the visuals leaving everything else as lesser importance. Sadly, the Great Gatsby follows Oz's footsteps, leaving the viewer wondering what could have been if more details were given equal importance as to how it looked.

Luckily, The Great Gatsby's visuals are worth all the effort that was put into them. The entire movie looks like a 1920's dream. The visuals are stunning, the colors look great, the costumes look impeccable, and the scenes involving Gatsby's parties really let the spectacular visuals shine, Baz Luhrmann makes those scenes look flawless.

And though I did feel disappointed with a majority of the performances, a few of the actors manage to get through the movie with good merit. Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan, Daisy's sarcastic and gossiping bff nails her part, she really does feel like one of the actors who transforms into her role as opposed to just being someone that puts on a show for the moviegoers. Leonardo DiCaprio also succeeds as well, he nails the charm and mystery put into Gatsby's artificial persona, despite not really being given as much material as he should have been given with this role.

Unfortunately, Great Gatsby's dedication to looking stunning really does negatively effect the other elements in the movie. One of them is definitely the pace. The Great Gatsby is almost 2.5 hours long and at times it feels like it's 25 hours long. It really drags throughout, it takes way too long to get to the point and I felt like the stunning visuals were shoved in our faces a bit too much at times. The audience really doesn't need 20 scenes of just staring at the water.

Characterization is another struggling aspect in The Great Gatsby. I'm not sure if most can be faulted to the performances or the script but something about The Great Gatsby's players just feels like a poser. Tobey Maguire as Nick, the aspiring author and narrator of the film just feels terribly out of place and wooden. Carey Mulligan really struggles here as Daisy as well. Nothing about her character makes you feel like she's larger then life. In the novel, Daisy is described as perfection, but here, you really don't see why someone would put so much effort into making her happy. Her scenes come off as terribly forced, contrived, and bland. And the less said about Isla Fisher's ridiculously overexaggerated portrayal as Myrtle, Daisy's husband's mistress, the better. And on the subject of Daisy's husband, Joel Edgerton seems to have gone in a completely different direction. While most of the performances/characters feel as stiff as stone, his feels completely unnatural, almost cartoonish especially in the later scenes with his reactions to Daisy and Gatsby's love affair.

The Great Gatsby could have been a masterpiece, but instead, it just shines in the visuals department with terribly bland performances, dialogue, and a pace that overshadows the visuals. "Don't tell us, show us" is a great motto that could be applied here. You hear about these people being such larger then life humans but the movie never really makes you feel that anyone is worth it, rendering the movie as heartless and soulless even with the scenes that should have been more emotion-filled. At one point in the movie, Daisy states that, "The best thing in this world that a girl can be is a beautiful little fool". Sadly, The Great Gatsby followed this.

1/4