My expectations were fairly low when I went to see The Great Gatsby (in 3D) (duh) last night. I had heard from a few people that it was especially bad and, even aside from that, the fact that it was about two and a half hours long did NOT make me think it would be an enjoyable experience. THAT IS TOO LONG FOR A MOVIE! (Movies ideally should be limited to 1.7 hours long, and that is including a blooper reel.) But I didn’t think The Great Gatsby was the absolute worst after all! There were definitely a lot of problems with it, though. The meanings behind different elements of the story were explained so clearly and plainly and repeatedly that you want to shout, hoping Baz Luhrmann is out there somewhere, standing in a window, listening, that we DEFINITELY get the thing with the house, and the green light, and the Eckleburg billboard, and the everything else, and please for the love of god stop it already and trust us and TAKE A CHILL PILL. And I haven’t read the book since high school, so maybe I’m forgetting, but I don’t think it had nearly as many ADR-related errors. Like — you’d think when your main goal in producing a film version of The Great Gatsby is visual-based, adding as many sparkles and cheesy camera sweeps over lavish party scenes and shots of Daisy’s face in the sky as you can, you’d also make it so that when people spoke, the sounds they made looked like they were coming out of their mouths? Spend a few more days on that, maybe? Also the frame story was unnecessary and often only a source of eye-rolling and inappropriate movie theater laughter. (The same goes for the sporadic use of words floating across the screen.) BUT. Leonardo DiCaprio was a fine Gatsby! Carey Mulligan was a beautiful Daisy! Tobey Maguire was, ahh, in the movie! Hahah. Not my choice for a Nick Carraway, I don’t think, but certainly fine enough. Joel Edgerton and Elizabeth Debicki were both wonderful! The soundtrack even worked better than I had expected initially (though that old-timey version of “Crazy In Love” is STILL a hilarious nightmare). Though it had its more-than-fair share of problems, it was fairly enjoyable, fun, beautiful, and still, basically, The Great Gatsby. Did you see it? What did you think? Did you get the thing with the eyes, or no?