THE GREAT GATSBY MOVIE REVIEW

In The Great Gatsby a midwestern war veteran finds himself drawn to the past and lifestyle of his millionaire neighbor.

I personally never read The Great Gatsby novel entirely, I have seen bits of it and I really enjoyed the dialogue in it. Coming into this film I was pretty much expecting a slow-paced but perhaps entertaining drama, The Great Gatsby is slow-paced but it’s also pretty weird.

The acting in this film is mainly good; Leonardo DiCaprio is great in the movie as I expected him to be. Tobey Maguire is good but not great, he’s not outstanding. The acting’s problem is that it’s overdone, the way people speak their lines doesn’t feel like I’m in the movie, it feels like I’m watching a play and that really took some people out including me.

The novel I’m told really focuses on the characters and they keep you with them to the last page, The Great Gatsby focuses mainly on the visuals which is not the smartest way to engage people in the movie and honestly it took me out.

There are scenes where the dialogue is really tense and that took my attention and kept me interested in the story, if they had focused more on that people may have found The Great Gatsby great but it’s more like The Reasonably Good Gatsby.

The story is really good, the visuals are really strong in a distracting way and some of the acting feels really forced which is a shame.

Leonardo DiCaprio gave a great performance and it’s a shame that I thought the movie could have been great, I even gave it a last chance in the end. There’s just nothing in The Great Gatsby that’s very memorable. In the end I didn’t get the chills I expected to and tomorrow I won’t really think about it.

Overall

“While The Great Gatsby has its moments none of them will stick with you and in the end it’s just good but not great.”

7.5/10 (Good but not Great)