Baz Luhrmann’s “Great Gatsby” (2013) Largely Succeeds

After about 45 minutes of Baz Luhrmann’s excessive whirling dervishness settles down and a captivating Leonardo DiCaprio finally arrives as the titular playboy man of mystery, The Great Gatsby (B-) becomes a pretty engrossing potboiler about forbidden love and tragic obsession. Nearly cloaked in all the razzmatazz, glamorous sets and anachronistic hip hop music is the morality tale of self-made nouveau riche versus entrenched American wealth. Tobey Maguire is his typical boring self as wingman writer, Carey Mulligan is only moderately enchanting as Daisy (really only captivating in her scenes with Leo) and Joel Edgerton is fairly menacing as Tom. Leave it to this spastic Aussie auteur to take a Great American Novel and turn it into the same Harlequin Romance he’s made five other times. A notch better than Australia though. Glad he didn’t add an exclamation point to the title to go along with the 3D.