The Great Gatsby (2013) – ★★1/2

The first third of the film was pretty bad. Once the story got started, there was no sense of pacing and everything was moving too fast. It was poorly edited, and I couldn’t tell what was going on for some of it. Once it got past that first phase, the pacing started to exist, and it progressed fine.

Performances were good. I really was able to care about Nick and Gatsby because Maguire and DiCaprio did well with the roles. Though I think the entire film could’ve built interest better and I didn’t like the visual style very much, but I had to be generous with a half star above average because the actors delivered the interesting character aspects so well, especially in the final act.

I also feel that it was a good call to write the film with a narration by Nick so that the books words good be properly interjected.

It wasn’t “great,” but it had some good stuff. I didn’t find the source material terribly entertaining, so I was surprised that the actors in the film were able to gather my interest more, even when their dialogue was word for word from the novel.