Big Screen Breakdown: The Great Gatsby

Every now and again, somebody writes a book. Then that book goes on to shape the development of American literature for a century. Somewhere in that century, Baz Luhrmann was born. Then this movie happened.

• The Great Gatsby is a novel about the excesses of the jazz age, and Baz Luhrmann's hyperactive, spasmic cinematography captures those excesses perfectly. The first twenty minutes or so show why Luhrmann and Gatsby could be such a great match.
• The first hour of the movie flies by. It isn't paced so much as whipped into a frothing gallopping frenzy from the minute the story begins. After about the halfway point, the movie slows to a crawl. My butt started to hurt - and if there's one thing a movie should do, it's distract you from how much your butt hurts.
• Leonardo Dicaprio is an excellent actor, and he brings a great deal of charm and innocence to the character of Gatsby.
• But if Leo says "Old Spowt" one more time... I'mma cut someone.
• Luhrmann incorporates a lot of R & B into the soundtrack, comparing it to the relative edginess of jazz music in the early twentieth century. It's a bit of a brave choice, and one I could see myself getting behind... if they hadn't chosen to include so many jazz standards at the same time. You wind up with a weird mix of contemporary hip-hop and classical jazz, and, as a result, you don't get enough of either.
• Maybe it's just me, but I swear that, while Gatsby's driving his car around, I could hear Tie Fighter noises. You know, like from Star Wars.
• So Tobey Maguire gets admitted to an asylum for treatment of his alcoholism, and he gets to sit around all day, getting breakfast served to him, and writing a novel? Someone pass me the Jägermeister!
• I'm actually not sure why Tobey Maguire's character was in this movie. In the book, Nick Carraway is our audience surrogate - a point of view character who describes the scenery to the audience. In the movie, he does the same thing... but it's silly, because there are these pictures on the screen that move. It's a moving picture. So Tobey Maguire just winds up being that guy in the movie theater who won't stop describing the stuff on the screen that everyone else can already see.
• And then there's that closing scene, when the words from Nick's typewriter fly up into the air, almost as if to remind the audience that there's probably a book out there they could be reading.
• Sometimes, just sometimes, the movie gets out of its own way and lets the images tell the story. Luhrmann choreographs a mean party scene, and there's another sequence near the beginning with a lot of billowing curtains that's really quite pretty. These moments are the best.
• Anyone else think those glasses are funny? Cuz I seriously laughed every time they popped up.
• Verdict: Eh... Watch it once for the spectacle.