An excellent film that’s already borderline underrated since audiences don’t seem to be fully responding to it and critics are split on whether it’s a celebration of amoral excess or a satire of it. [A bogus debate if there ever was one, and clearly meant to make the person having it feel morally superior to those in the film…which is more than a little pathetic.]
What Works: This is Scorsese’s best film since Goodfellas, only fitting since it wants to be a white-collar Goodfellas. Every frame is alive and exciting and bursting with the old energy that made Martin a master all those years ago. Leonardo DiCaprio is clearly relishing the chance to play a fun, live-wire character who seems to be literally exploding with confidence, and Jonah Hill gives his best performance to date as a more mature, diseased variation on his usual down-for-anything sidekick. Watching these two talk circles around everyone around them, and even themselves is intoxicating and makes the three hour runtime fly by. And I don’t care what any overly prissy critic says, the ending is pitch-perfect.
What Doesn’t: The film was nominated for “Best Comedy” at the Golden Globes instead of Best Drama, and I think the fast and loose humor may sometimes undercut the drama (as in the sequence when DiCaprio had to drive his sports car seriously impaired and even struggles to get into it first). Also, the delicate of sensibilities will leave offended…although maybe I should put this under “What Works” instead.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Could twenty minutes be trimmed out? Sure. Could the number of “fucks” said on screen be cut down? Sure (it’s currently the record-holding movie for most number of f-bombs). But Scorsese is interested in letting the lead character’s excess (and all those like him) drive the movie, and this is the real Dicaprio-starring remake of The Great Gatsby.