Anyone in search of the true Gatsby, man or myth, will be hard put to find more than a portentous and elliptic recitation of excerpts from the novel, illustrated by minor dramatizations and major tableaux: little more than a game of living statues.

| Sep 24, 2024

Clayton is so obsessed with respecting the story that he turns it into a museum piece; you see the actors going through the paces of dramatizing a classic, rather than finding the heartbeat underneath.

| Jun 21, 2016

The film is faithful to the letter of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel but entirely misses its spirit.

| Mar 6, 2013

It all gets rather tedious watching other people enjoy themselves, although a colourful recreation of the period that stays faithful to the novel makes the film easier to bear.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 6, 2013

In sum this picture is a total failure of every requisite sensibility. A long, slow, sickening bore.

| Mar 6, 2013

The Francis Coppola script and Jack Clayton's direction paint a savagely genteel portrait of an upper class generation that deserved in spades what it got circa 1929 and after.

| Jul 26, 2007

Director Jack Clayton seems overawed by the opulence of the production as well as by the mythic presence of Fitzgerald -- and the result is a film of shimmering surface brilliance and almost complete lack of focus or substance.

| Jul 26, 2007

A literary adaptation that continually begs detrimental comparison with the novel, this relies too much on appearance, making little attempt to explore behind the beguiling '20s façade.

| Jun 24, 2006

The movie can't see this through all its giant closeups of pretty knees and dancing feet. It's frivolous without being much fun.

Full Review | May 9, 2005

The movie is 'faithful' to the novel with a vengeance -- to what happens in the novel, that is, and not to the feel, mood, and spirit of it.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 23, 2004