Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Wordiezett So much average

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life

M Campbell I just finished re-reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby". It's a novel I hated as a child -- was forced to read it for English in high school -- but appreciated much more as an adult. Then I went to Netflix and watched this movie again. It is, for the most part, a faithful adaptation of the novel but Fitzgerald's beautiful, succinct prose is the only reason to read this tragic tale to begin with. No matter how big the stars or how gorgeous the sets the bottom line remains the artistic assembly of words in the novel. Intermittent narration doesn't cut it and the story itself isn't much to begin with. It's ALL about Fitzgerald's use of words. Lacking that is lacking everything that makes "The Great Gatsby", the novel, something of value. This movie compared to the novel is like...a paint by numbers kit for a masterpiece by Van Gogh or an elementary school band's rendition of Beethoven's 9th Symphony.So, I guess I'll say, if you haven't read the novel you may enjoy this movie. And even if you've read the novel the movie may satisfy on some level though the heart of it has been cut out. But do yourself a favor and read the novel. Read every word. Drink them in. Admire the skill with which Fitzgerald uses language. Then go watch "The Great Waldo Pepper", another Redford film, and enjoy.

Ross622 Jack Clayton's adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" was a very well made movie with some of the best character development I have seen in a fictional work that was turned into a film. The movie stars Robert Redford as Gatsby who is a very successful businessman who has his own private company, Redford plays Gatsby it's as if he is taking the role like it is nothing to him. In the film we also meet the narrator to the story which is a bondsman named Nick Carraway (played by Sam Waterston) who is the cousin of the woman of Gatsby's dreams Daisy Buchanan (played by Mia Farrow) who got married to Tom Buchanan (played by Bruce Dern) while Gatsby was serving in WWI. Basically this movie along with the book is just one huge love square because Tom has a mistress named Myrtle Wilson (played by Karen Black) who is married to George Wilson (played by Scott Wilson). There is a lot of things that I like about this movie besides the acting, I also was really impressed with the production design as well as the costumes which both areas won Academy awards for 41 years ago. I did read Fitzgerald's novel before I saw this movie and while watching it the story became much more clear to me. I would rank this as one of the best romance movies of all time along with Gone with the Wind (1939), Ball of Fire (1941), It Happened One Night (1934), La Dolce Vita (1960), The Apartment (1960), and Some Like It Hot (1959). This is one of 1974's best films.

nathan-mcilwaine The 1974 film "The Great Gatsby" was like a peanut shell, and the book is like the whole peanut. It accurately depicted the main story and setting directly from the book, but the characters appeared hollow. Except for Wilson, the characters fail to make the viewers care for any of them. Also, many characters (especially Daisy) were very overdone and unrelatable. In the book at least Daisy was somewhat relatable. In short, it showed the story of "The Great Gatsby" without all of Fitzgerald's emotional power that made it so great. This movie seemed to take every detail from the book down to the dialogue, but there were some slight alterations. The scene in which Nick and Daisy were alone together and Daisy tells him about troubles with Tom was at Jordan's golf tournament. This is opposed to the actual scene in the book where Daisy and Nick are on the Buchanan's porch. Nick also finds out about Jordan's dishonest behavior from his memory of a Newspaper article, not in person at the golf tournament when she moves the ball . Clayton might have decided to add this because it showed this act out instead of just retelling it through Nick's memories like in the book.. Another change between the film and the novel was that when Nick first met Meyer Wolfsheim in the film, he was informed by Wolfsheim that Gatsby started out poor and was made by Wolfsheim. This is contrary to the novel in which Nick isn't told this by Wolfsheim until after Gatsby is dead. Clayton may have done this in order to show Nick's distrust for Gatsby. In the book, Nick's internal conflict over believing Gatsby was in his thoughts. Clayton may have thought that it would fit better in the film to have the conflicting evidence be presented in conversation rather than through Nick's internal deductions. The film did a good job at recreating the setting and the characters on the outside. However, watching this story failed to have the same beautiful eloquence that Fitzgerald pulled off in the book. The characters in the book were elaborate and had a very distinct personality whereas in the film they seemed flat and simple. Gatsby's death at the end of the film seemed sad but not anywhere close to the same extent as in the book. It is this gap in emotion that makes the novel better than the film.

thedietrich The movie's plot thickens towards the end but ultimately fails to capture the nuances of character that only the printed page can provide. As such, it lacks both the gripping drama of film and the thoughtful depth of a written work leaving the viewer high and dry. The last 30 minutes or so retain the viewer's attention as a murder mystery, but the other 75% of the movie is painfully slow, vapid, and uninteresting. It tries desperately to be artistic, but instead succeeds in being sophomoric at best. For instance: there a shot which lasts almost a full 6 seconds (I think) which consists solely of a dancing woman rabidly flailing her mini skirt back and forth at a dance party. After an agonizing 1hr or so of this, we get a brief, relatively simple murder mystery, and the end.