The Great Gatsby

director: Baz Luhrmann
year: 2013

story: Nick Carraway, a young man from Minnesota, moves to New York in the summer of 1922 to learn about the bond business. He rents a house in the West Egg district of Long Island, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by the new rich. His next-door neighbor is a mysterious man named Jay Gatsby, who lives in a gigantic Gothic mansion and throws extravagant and decadent parties every week. Soon Nick gets drawn into a destructive story of love and success, hopes and disappointment.

what I liked: Surprisingly I liked Leonardo DiCaprio (just to let you know, I´m not a Titanic lover at all).

what I didn´t like: Where shall I start? First issue I had was that there were so many completely unnecessary camera movements that have no other function than entertaining the 3D customers. A waste of time and nerves for all the others and completely out of place in what is supposed to be a literature adaption.
Second: Why must a novel of 114 pages be blown up to 140min? Less scenes filled with apocalyptic and disturbing dancing and car racing would have helped. Third, using modern music might have done the trick in "Moulin Rouge" and "Romeo and Juliet" but here it just felt...wrong. I love the 20´s I love Art Deco, I don´t need Jay-Z and Beyonce in that.
How can Gatsby be played convincingly if he has to switch between a mad Willy Wonka and his alter ego Romeo all the time? How to feel compassionate when everything and everyone you see is so heavily stylised and over the top?How can the otherwise charming Carey Mulligan be so bland in this film?

verdict: Made me leave the cinema thinking "wtf?!?".
Style over substance - Mr Luhrmann, please stay away from any more literature adaptions, this just didn´t work out at all. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but all the people who so far have praised this one really must have some really weird taste.