The classic F. Scott Fitzgerald book becomes another movie...I'll just leave it at that until after the plot paragraph.
Plot: Nick Carraway moves to New York working as a bond salesman. He lives in a small house in Long Island next to the large mansion of a mysterious millionaire named Gatsby who throws great big parties regularly in his home. Eventually Nick meets and befriends Gatsby himself, where he learns that he is secretly asking Nick to help him meet his married cousin Daisy with whom Gatsby has had a past with.
I read the actual book The Great Gatsby back in my junior English class back in high school. While it wasn't the most wonderful thing I ever read, it was still enjoyable for the most part...especially comparing to other books we read that year that I didn't really give a rats for like The Bell Jar and The Catcher in the Rye. So when I learned that another film based on the book was coming out, I was interested to see how it was going to turn out. But as the day of it coming out came closer, I learned from one of my best friends Meg, that the director of the movie also the one who directed Moulin Rouge. From there I had a very good idea at how the director, Baz Luhrmann was going to structure this movie; almost just like Moulin Rouge, he was going to make the first hour or first half of the movie have all the crazy visuals, dancing, super quick cuts on the editing, be very huge and energetic and seems like it's not going to stop at all, and then the rest of the film is where we get the real meat in the story with the drama and romance and so on. And you know what? That turned out to be almost exactly what I got when I went to see this movie. The first half of the movie is almost all about the parties at Gatsby's mansion with these pop songs slightly mixed with actual jazz that is ridiculous to play considering the time period the story takes place at, but you tap your feet to the rhythm to them anyway. And even with the scenes that are as far away from Gatsby's mansion as possible the editing has all these quick cuts. In fact the editing is a lot like how Doug Walker pointed out the editing in the beginning of Moulin Rouge in his video review where he even created a game called "Find the Shot that Lasts More Then Five Seconds." I actually ended up playing that game during one of the scenes in the first hour that didn't have squat to do with Gatsby's parties. And you know what? It's the same freaking deal! There were scenes like when Nick, Daisy and Tom are just having dinner or when Gatsby was just taking Nick out to lunch where there were little to no shots that were even longer then 3-4 seconds. In both of those scenes there's no reason for that to happen. The dinner scene was just introducing Tom and Daisy and giving us a little more about Nick's life and the drive to lunch was Gatsby telling Nick almost everything about him. Those scenes should've been nice and slow in terms of editing, but instead they're acting like we need to see the scenes in practically every angle imaginable. But like I also predicted, the rest of the movie is where the editing does slow down to a more normal rate and we focused more on the romance, drama and altogether emotion that leads us to the REAL story of the film. And I'm pretty glad that I was right about that as well as all the partying and crap from the first hour of the film. Because the rest of the film is what I was really looking forward to with this movie, and not only did they do it, but they did well. In the rest of the film, we get great performances from the cast such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton and of coarse Toby Maguire. Jeremy Jahns said in his review to the movie that DiCaprio was a good choice to be Gatsby because just because he is DiCaprio, you immediately want to root for him. I'm not a die hard fan of DiCaprio, but looking back, yeah he has a point. DiCaprio did give us a rather touching performance that made me root for Gatsby a little bit more then I did when I read the book or saw the other movie with Robert Redford. Mulligan and Edgerton also did great job with their performances as Daisy and Tom with displaying just about exactly how I remember the characters. Toby Maguire as Nick...is something of a mix. I mean as a whole I thought he did great too, but the problem is he wasn't exactly groundbreaking as far as he goes as an actor. I personally did somewhat hope that he would considering he hasn't really done anything after the Spider-Man movies. I mean the latest movie I've seen of him up till now was Brothers, and that was back in 2009. That movie was one of the earliest movies I reviewed too, that was like...my 27th, 28th review...and here I am roughly 415 ish reviews later...yeah. So with that said, I hoped that we would get a little more for him. But even though he didn't exactly blow me away, he also wasn't terrible or was a pain to watch, he just gave a nice enjoyable performance, and for now, that's fine too...again, for now. And also we get a little more of the symbolism of the story. While I don't remember everything from the book (I mean come on, junior year in high school was over 5 years ago) I do remember some of the most memorable symbolism that Fitzgerald gave. And I honestly think that with most of them, the movie played them out a lot better then I thought they would with things like the green light next to Daisy and Tom's house. Even with the rest of the film however, it does have some noticeable problems that have to do with the movie as a whole. One is that it's too long - I think it should've been maybe about 20 minutes shorter, (especially with all the party stuff) and there was some development to the story that was left out. George, Myrtle and Jordan play a fairly big factor into the book and halfway through the film I couldn't help but notice how George and Myrtle especially were very downplayed in their roles. Does it make sense that they were? ...I guess, but if a guy like me remembers the book just from reading it in high school, chances are that fans of the book are probably not going to like that.
And that's my review for The Great Gatsby, it has its unnecessary similarities to Luhrmann's directing from Moulin Rouge with focusing on just great visuals and dancing and super quick editing during the first hour and then getting to the deep part of the story with the rest of the film. But what comes out from the film altogether is a film with great performances, good loyalty to the book (as far as I know) and visuals that are indeed good that altogether makes this version of The Great Gatsby a film that's not exactly something I would buy on Blue-Ray, but I had a pretty nice time seeing it.
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