The Great Gatsby Movie Review

Sorry to keep you waiting, old sport. Yep, didn't take long for me to make an "old sport" joke. Yep, I'm pretty lame. Anyway, let's talk about this movie.

So The Great Gatsby is the film adaptation of the classic book from the 1920's of the same name. Apparently there have been multiple Great Gatsby movies that have come out, but I haven't seen any. Maybe I should have watched one or two of them to prepare for this and be able to compare the films. Oh well. When the trailer for this movie came out, it actually happened to be while I was in the process of reading the book. And the trailer for this film was really exciting! The cast was really intriguing. The film looked really flashy, and this helped me read the book. Because then it gave me an idea of what to picture as I read the book. I liked this book when I read it, which is saying something. I've never been a big fan of reading fiction, but I liked this book. It kept me interested. So I was excited for this movie.

The film was originally set to be released in December, right around the time all the heavy hitters for the Academy Awards would be coming out. Then all the sudden I remember hearing they were pushing it back until May. I was disappointed by the news, but I still couldn't wait. I think a lot of people expected it to be a Best Picture nominee. I checked Rotten Tomatoes a day before I went to see the film and noticed a lot of negative reviews. So I wasn't sure what to expect from the film.

I haven't talked to a lot of people that have seen this film, but everyone except for one of my friends said they really liked it. Obviously the film is really well-acted. Leonardo DiCaprio might be the best actor working today. He's great as Gatsby. You can count on him in whatever role he's in to be great. He was a great Gatsby (no pun intended). I haven't seen a lot of Tobey Maguire, but some people can't stand him. All I've seen him as I think is Spider-Man (and his little cameo in Tropic Thunder) and I loved him as Spider-Man. I knew going in to this he would be perfect as our storyteller Nick Carraway as he does the same type of narrating in Spider-Man. Carey Mulligan played Daisy, and she was good as well. Joel Edgerton played the despicable Tom Buchanan. Watching the film, I wasn't sure if I had seen him in a movie before or not, and then later I looked up what else he had been in and I was shocked that was in the recent film Warrior. In Warrior, he plays the all-around good guy that everyone loves and you really root for. In this movie he was the complete opposite. You hated Tom Buchanan. This speaks volumes to how good of an actor Edgerton is. Great performance. Great performances all across the board.

Next thing to look at is visuals. Visuals aren't something I care too much about typically. People always want me to watch the film Avatar, which I watched a little bit of and fell asleep because I was so bored by it. Visuals can't make a movie. But in Gatsby, the visuals were nice to look at, and I'm not going to say that they took anything away from the film. They added to the film. They were a nice plus. Especially for a film that is based on an old book, I think making it flashy and more fast-paced is not a bad thing. Maybe older people don't like it. I don't know. But I had no problem with the visuals, something that a lot of critics didn't like. 

As for the sound in the film, the music is mainly modern stuff. Something I feared was that this would have too much Jay-Z in it. Not in the sense of too much of his music, but just too much that would be praising himself or too much of his style. Jay-Z is becoming something that is bigger than music lately. Recently Yankees all-star Robinson Cano fired one of the biggest names in the sports agency business, Scott Boras, to hire Jay-Z as his agent. I had a fear that this would be too much Jay-Z, but it wasn't. And as for the modern music, I didn't have a huge problem with that. The one part where I felt like it was pushing it was when they had a cover of the Beyonce song "Crazy In Love" sung in a old-fashioned way. I mean like, c'mon. Do we really need that? Why not just have an actual old song there? This had to be done for the big teen girl following of Beyonce, something I will never fully understand. That might have been pushing it a little bit. But other than that I didn't really have any problems with the music in the film and that's only a little thing.

I think the story is well-presented to us. It's well-told and it keeps itself moving. It doesn't feel like it is too long. I think there's a part that might drag on for just a little bit, but you could probably say that about any movie that's 2 hours 23 minutes long. 

There's nothing to really talk about plot-wise, since this is a book. You can't critique the plot. It is a sad story, so if you haven't read the book, I'll warn you of that. I think this film does a good job of bringing these characters and the story to life. 

I think that just about covers it all! I think you will enjoy this movie. If you liked the book, I think you will like the movie. So yeah, I really liked this film. How good is it? I'm not sure. It won't get a Best Picture nomination, which it was aiming for, but it was certainly a good film. If it were up to me, maybe I'd put it up for an Oscar? I'm not sure. All I will say is it's really good. So yeah. I've seen four movies of the past five weekends, and I can say that so far, the summer movie lineup is looking strong! I gave good reviews for all four of those films (the other three being 42, Pain & Gain, and Iron Man 3). If you are interested in any of my other reviews, go ahead and check them out. My next review should be a review of The Hangover 3. I'm pretty excited because it is looking like a good summer movie lineup. 

So now let me hear your thoughts. What did you think of The Great Gatsby? Did you read the book? Did you like the way the movie was done? Let me know what you think! Drop a comment below, or hit me up on the blog Facebook fan page or on Twitter @vellvita7. As always, thanks for reading!