Gatsby (Movie)

I remember reading parts of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby in my 11th grade American Lit class (which was many years ago--four to be exact) and being completely amazed with this novel. The character of Gatsby makes you feel so much sympathy for him even if you know nothing about him and even if he happens to be a little bit on the aggressive side. The love he shows for Daisy makes a person overlook all of that and really love this mysterious Jay Gatsby. Now, I've seen The Great Gatsby movie that was done in 2000 and it was pretty fantastic so I decided to watch this movie when it came out, but--I confess--with somewhat low expectations. Even still, I had been nervous waiting for the movie to come out. I feared the movie would flop (simply because everyone seems to have bad taste in movies) or worse, Hollywood would destroy this story and add their own little spin to it. However, I remained positive because Leonardo DiCaprio was cast in the role of Gatsby. I didn't think life could get any better because from the beginning of reading that novel when I was still in high school, I had pictured DiCaprio portraying that wonderful Gatsby. And I still believe he did a spectacular job and played his role brilliantly even if he has yet again been overlooked for an award. However, this blog is not being posted to describe to you in every slow painful detail why I think DiCaprio is one of the best actors out there, this blog's purpose is to convince you to give this movie, Gatsby, a chance. The actors/actresses line-up was fantastic and although, I still like the 2000 movie better, I do believe this one is still super great. There were only two problems I had with this movie (none of which involve DiCaprio.) My problem lies within the horrible modern taste in the music that was supposed to portray music from the 1920s. I mean come on people, how hard is it to stick with the right time period. I can see why they chose the music they did, but to me, it is just bad taste. My second and final problem with this movie is the character of Daisy they portrayed in this movie. The Daisy I know from the book was bubbly, always happy, and pretty smart. This movie portrayed her as down-right depressing and even a little ditsy. Despite these two problems, the movie is very much worth seeing and I will definitely be watching it more than once.