‘The Great Gatsby’ glitters but is not gold, reviews say

Oscar Wilde wrote that moderation is a fatal thing, and Australian filmmaker Baz Luhrmann would seem to agree. His latest project has provided him with an expansive canvas for all three: a glittering big-screen adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” — in 3-D, no less. The Times’ Kenneth Turan writes that while the screenplay remains largely faithful to the source, Luhrmann’s “filmmaking point of view suffocates beyond resuscitation any dramatic interest the story might have generated.” The film “too often plays as no more than an excuse to display frantic, frenetic personal style,” Turan adds, as the director and his team “pile on the spectacle and the glitter until we are gasping for air.” Review: ‘Gatsby’s’ substance overwhelmed by Luhrmann’s style Compounding the problem is that “Luhrmann’s direction of his actors cudgels every instinct of naturalness out of them,” although Leonardo DiCaprio, in the title role, does manage to survive the “onslaught of insincerity” as he “successfully calls on all his movie star charisma to become the film’s only person of interest.” In the Village Voice, Stephanie Zacharek gives a mixed review and writes, “‘The Great Gatsby’ is both too much and what Luhrmann wants, less a movie version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel than a movie version of Jay Gatsby himself. And those are the reasons to love it.” Among the reasons not to love it: It’s “garish and over the top,” “the performers look lost in Luhrmann’s extravagant panorama,” and the film “seldom, if ever, captures that fierce delicacy of feeling Fitzgerald packed into every sentence.” Christy Lemire of the Associated Press says that “Luhrmann would seem like the ideal director to bring F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story to the screen yet again, to breathe new life into these revered words.” Unfortunately, that’s not the case: “His ‘Great Gatsby’ is all about the glitter but it has no soul — and the fact that he’s directed it in 3-D only magnifies the feeling of artificiality. It gets too caught up in the buzz of the party.” The Chicago Sun Times’ Matt Zoller Seitz begins his review with faint praise, declaring, “Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of ‘The Great Gatsby’ isn’t a disaster.” He adds that “Every frame is sincere” and “Even when the movie’s not working, its style fascinates.