‘The Great Gatsby’ opens to mixed reviews
This week’s big ticket release, an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby which opened in theatres in the US last week and sees a European release this week, has opened to mixed reviews.
The film is currently "Certified Rotten" (50%) on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 171 reviews, with the general consensus being that while it’s visually spectacular, it seems to be lacking in content.
The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and Bloomberg News slated the film saying:
“Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby is a gaudy, Ritz-sized rhinestone of a movie, more flashy than dazzling, beguiling from some angles and phony to its core…” – Bloomberg News
“This dreadful film even derogates the artistry of Fitzgerald, who wrote The Great Gatsby while living on Long Island and in Europe…” - Joe Morgenstern (Wall Street Journal)
“Baz Luhrmann delivers an energetic, glittering adaptation of the classic Fitzgerald novel, but sacrifices all of the original's subtlely in the process…” – Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian)
The New York Journal and The Daily Telegraph reviews, however, were more generous with their praises and said:
“The best thing about Baz Luhrmann's much-anticipated/much-dreaded The Great Gatsby is that, for all its computer-generated whoosh and overbroad acting, it is unmistakably F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. That is no small deal….” - David Edelstein (New York Magazine)
“There is surely no contradiction in praising the Australian director's batty ambitions for this story while admitting that they often work against it…” – Robbie Collin (The Daily Telegraph)
What users are saying about The Great Gatsby on Twitter:
The film opened the 66th Cannes Film Festival this week and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Isla Fisher, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Tobey Maguire, Gemma Ward, Callan McAuliffe and Amitabh Bachchan.
View the trailer of The Great Gatsby below and don’t forget to tell us what you thought of it right here.
