Baz Luhrmann directs Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and Carey Mulligan in this adaptation of F.Scott Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age fable about a man who acquires untold wealth to seduce the married woman he was too poor to propose to.

My favourite (respectable) book as a teen. This adaptation felt diminished on the small screen, less impressive on second watch. No director does saccharine doomed romance or overwhelming production design like Luhrmann but his other stylistic choices often are grating. This contains too much of the same braying franticness and musical naffness that makes Moulin Rouge unwatchable for me. This just about overcomes it’s frenetic ornateness thanks to some unguardedly vulnerable work by Leo and the sheer pure mystery of the source material. To accuse a Great Gatsby film of being OTT is churlish… so… there we are, old sport.

7

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