The Great Gatsby
Warner Bros. Pictures | Release Date: May 10, 2013 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
55
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 45 Critic Reviews
Positive:
19
Mixed:
23
Negative:
3
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenMay 9, 2013
It’s a terrific adaptation that succeeds not only as a work of cinema but also, wonderfully, as proof of the novel’s greatness. In short, the picture rebukes the revisionists even while entertaining them. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperMay 8, 2013
Amidst all the fireworks and the cascading champagne and the insanely over-the-top parties, we’re reminded again and again that The Great Gatsby is about a man who spends half a decade constructing an elaborate monument to the woman of his dreams. Read full review
88
New York PostLou LumenickMay 7, 2013
Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby is the first must-see film of Hollywood’s summer season, if for no other reason than its jaw-dropping evocation of Roaring ’20s New York — in 3-D, no less. Read full review
83
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanMay 9, 2013
Now comes director Baz Luhrmann, who’s incapable of taking anything literally, and what do we get? The “Gatsby” that, of three I’ve seen and two I’ve read about, seems most faithful to the spirit of Fitzgerald’s superbly sad book. His audacity pays off in a way that may not exactly reproduce the novel but continually illuminates it. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianMarc MohanMay 9, 2013
When the camera glides down a pier to settle for the first time on Gatsby's face, it's a movie-star moment of the sort we don't often get anymore, and there aren't many actors who could pull off Gatsby's mixture of confident charisma and pathetic vulnerability. Read full review
83
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallMay 8, 2013
As a purely sensory experience at the movies you're hard-pressed to find anything more dazzling than the first 90 minutes of The Great Gatsby, when Luhrmann's riotous amusements make anything possible. Read full review
75
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsMay 9, 2013
The Great Gatsby is both swooningly romantic and giddily energetic. Read full review
75
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMay 9, 2013
The good news about Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of the Fitzgerald masterpiece is that he doesn't use the novel as a mere pretext for his own visual invention, but genuinely tries to capture the Fitzgeraldian spirit, and for the most part, despite some vulgar lapses, he succeeds.
75
McClatchy-Tribune News ServiceRoger MooreMay 8, 2013
This movie hangs utterly on performance, and DiCaprio’s Gatsby is mesmerizing. Read full review
70
SlateDana StevensMay 9, 2013
It is, as I suspected, a gargantuan hunk of over-art-directed kitsch, but it makes for a grandiose, colorful, pleasure-drenched night at the movies. Read full review
70
TimeRichard CorlissMay 9, 2013
The actors emote up a summer storm. Maguire’s otherworldly coolness suits the observer drawn into a story he might prefer only to watch. DiCaprio is persuasive as the little boy lost impersonating a tough guy, and Mulligan finds ways to express Daisy’s magnetism and weakness. Read full review
70
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinMay 9, 2013
You can find fault with virtually every scene in Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby — and yet in spite of all the wrong notes, Fitzgerald (and the excess he was writing about and living) comes through. The Deco extravagance of the big party scenes is enthralling. Luhrmann throws money at the screen in a way that is positively Gatsby-like, walloping you intentionally and un- with the theme of prodigal waste. Read full review
70
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMay 9, 2013
Less a conventional movie adaptation than a splashy, trashy opera, a wayward, lavishly theatrical celebration of the emotional and material extravagance that Fitzgerald surveyed with fascinated ambivalence. Read full review
70
Village VoiceStephanie ZacharekMay 7, 2013
It's an expressionist work, a story reinvented to the point of total self-invention, polished to a handsome sheen and possessing no class or taste beyond the kind you can buy. And those are the reasons to love it. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyMay 6, 2013
No matter how frenzied and elaborate and sometimes distracting his technique may be, Luhrmann's personal connection and commitment to the material remains palpable, which makes for a film that, most of the time, feels vibrantly alive while remaining quite faithful to the spirit, if not the letter or the tone, of its source. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyMay 8, 2013
It's a dazzling time capsule of a shimmering era and a devastating look into the dark side of the American dream. Too bad Luhrmann, the caffeinated conductor, doesn't trust that story enough. He'd rather blast your retinas into sugar-shock submission. Uncle, old sport! Uncle! Read full review
63
RogerEbert.comMatt Zoller SeitzJun 11, 2013
Even when the movie's not working, its style fascinates. That "not working" part is a deal breaker, though — and it has little to do with Luhrmann's stylistic gambits, and everything to do with his inability to reconcile them with an urge to play things straight. Read full review
63
Boston GlobeTy BurrMay 9, 2013
It has in Leonardo DiCaprio — magnificent is the only word to describe this performance — the best movie Gatsby by far, superhuman in his charm and connections, the host of revels beyond imagining, and at his heart an insecure fraud whose hopes are pinned to a woman. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineRichard LarsonMay 8, 2013
This is a film which takes classic source material and imbues it on screen with a sense of wonder commensurate to its prior form, perhaps offering an even more visceral impression of the possibilities inherent to this beautiful, tragic world. Read full review
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