I suppose I must, but there is no joy in it! The movie, I mean.
Basically, wannabe Moulin Rouge. And not just like a nod to, like wishing to recapture the magic of that awesome movie (my second favourite, after Big Fish). From the opening "curtain" everything goes to poop. The voiceover is awful, Tobey Maguire sounds like an ancient (but he isn't! He's just jaded!) and the frame of him being in a sanatorium is so thin you just want to forget it completely. But you can't because they keep coming back to it for no reason, other than to remind you with painfully contrived typing the story sequences that this isn't Christian writing a story about love. It's Nick Carraway being obsessed with Leonardo DiCaprio and spouting some of the most flat, obvious dialogue that ever rearranged itself from the tomato sauce spilled on the script as Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce discussed "ideas" over dinner.
Sure, there are some good points. I saw the opening shot (water! with a green light on the other side!) and said this looks bloody beautiful. It is. But we all knew that already, and that's why I went. Okay, maybe I also had some hopes that it would be good. Let forth the floodgates of my disdain! Disappointed hopes have daubed my barbs with...um....lots of words!
Another good thing was Daisy-coming-to-tea scene. That was just funny. And Leo's suit got all transparent. And then dry right away! Of course, there were a few other super intense = hilarious moments. Mostly Nick creeping Gatsby. He must have very good eyesight to see him through the windows ALL THE TIME.
The ladies all look stunning. I would like to have some of Leo's shirts. THAT CANARY YELLOW CAR! POOP POOP! POOP POOP! (As Mr. Toad would say). I think the only good bit of acting in this whole shebang comes courtesy Amitabh Bachchan (the dude who played Wolfsheim). That tiny scene at the club where Nick gets an eyeful of his human tooth tiepin is just about the only time with genuine mystery or unease. Instead of the usual telling (saying blah blah blah Gatsby is so mysterious and magnetic, etc.) they actually show Wolfsheim's mystery and magnetism. Since he doesn't really say or do anything and we only see him for a few minutes, I'm giving this to the actor's performance rather than the rest of the "creative" team.
But was that worth it to be beat over the head with symbolism the whole time? (The Eyes of TJ Eckleburg, the green light) Nope. Especially if the actual meaning of the symbols is so muddied and overwrought that you forget why the hell they're important (this is if you even remember high school English class. Or if you even care) all you know is they keep popping up over and over and over and over etc.
What else peeved me? Oh yeah, Daisy and Tom and the careless rich and hope and the American Dream. Fuck that. It's not in the movie. Pardon my French. They spend all their time on confetti pool parties and try to explain away the rest through lazy narration. Rather than showing the characters doin' their thang we get told exactly what to think and what to take away from it all.
After the movie my mum asked what we went to see. "Gatsby" sez I. "Oh. Everyone said it sucked." Thus sayeth my 65 year old mother, and apparently everyone she knows. If that somehow makes it more awful... I really don't know. I'm just mad. But I did get some free Cherry Blasters out of it!
