Tom Shone has posted a complaining but moderately favorable review of Baz Luhrmann‘s The Great Gatsby, which had its big U.S. premiere last night at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. The operative terms are “handsome,” hectic” and “very impressive yet slightly boring at the same time.” Leonardo DiCaprio‘s rendering of Jay Gatsby is “the most rock-solid presence in the film,” Shone feels. He gives it a B-minus at the end of the review, but it reads more like a C-plus to me.
The funniest…okay, the only funny paragraph addresses the narration by Tobey Maguire‘s Nick Carraway character: “”No act of Dionysian revelry is quite as laborious as the one narrated in voiceover by Tobey Maguire,” Shone states. “He’s all over this movie, regrettably. Luhrmann has clearly tried his utmost to rev up Maguire’s notoriously lethargic delivery, he still he manages the excitement levels of a small marsupial, recently awoken from hibernation by the roaring twenties and now anxious to get back to sleep.”
What’s the point of my quoting any further? Just read the piece.