The plot is simple. A World War One veteran from the Midwest named Nick Carraway (Tobey Macguire) moves to West Egg, New York to support his writing through a stock broker job, meets his extravagant neighbor Jay Gatsby (who he later describes as the most hopeful man he had ever met), attempts to reunite with an attractive relative of his, Daisy (Carey Mulligan), who's own husband, Tom (Joel Edgerton), is having an affair himself. Shenanigans ensues. Oh, and it's all set in suburban New York in the early 1920s.
Breakdown time. The movie will be scored a grade out of 100%. The grade will be based on
Quality of Film-35%
Concept and Storyline-20%
Performance of Actors-20%
Public Opinion (lifted from iMDB)-10%
Personal Interest-10%
Originality-5%
Quality of Film-32%
Even for a big-budget blockbuster of a classic novel, director Baz Luhman went a little over-the-top with this one. It felt almost perfectly as if I was back in America of the 1920s, if it wasn't for the rap music playing at the parties. Seriously, guys? What's up with that? And honestly some of the fade effects were pretty cheesy too.
Concept and Storyline-17%
Besides varying some in the device used to tell the story, the film largely remained the classic novel but on the movie screen. It may have been a bit dull at some moments and a bit noisy at others, but for the most part I was kept very entertained by a very fluid and in-depth story played out in what I really must admit was a very good representation of the 1920s.
Performance of Actors-20%
Leonardo DiCaprio is far too often one of those actors that just seems like themselves in another movie. This time, he really wasn't. After his first appearance, I didn't even see Leo DiCaprio on screen. I saw Jay Gatsby, eccentric millionaire. The same can be said for Macguire's performance (though I did start thinking Spider-Man after my roommate pointed it out). Other than that, our actors all behaved themselves and performed their roles excellently. Also, I'd like to point out how well the costumes were assembled. Perfect 20.
Public Opinion-7.5%
Once again, iMDB has spoken on this one.
Personal Interest-8%
Though I wasn't tracking this film for months before release, I knew from the moment I saw the preview that I was gonna watch this movie this summer. Though I don't think I've read The Great Gatsby since my freshman year of high school, it's still one of those books that kind of just stuck with me, and I knew that Leo DiCaprio would make it into one hell of a party on screen, even if it did involve him running over a (for the time period) scantily clad woman with an expensive car.
Originality-2%
I'm sorry to say it, but making a screen version of The Great Gatsby is, unfortunately, not that uncommon. According to Wikipedia, it has been done about seven times, with operas, TV versions, and even webcomics to boot. Still, not a bad take.
Total Score: 86.5% (B). Nice run, everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment