Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby greeted with mixed reviews in the US Baz Luhrmann's lavish adaptation of The Great Gatsby, one of the season's most hotly anticipated films, has been greeted with mixed reviews in America. David Denby, film critic of the New Yorker, decried the Moulin Rouge director's "vulgarity" and "stunning absence of taste" in his handling of F Scott Fitzgerald's classic. He did, however, acknowledge that the film's star, Leonardo DiCaprio, is "a more forceful Gatsby than placid Robert Redford was in the tastefully opulent but inert adaptation of the book from 1974." Luhrmann's vulgarity is designed to win over the young audience, and it suggests that he's less a filmmaker than a music-video director with endless resources and a stunning absence of taste. David Denby, The New Yorker (£) What Luhrmann grasps even less than previous adapters of the tale is that Fitzgerald was, via his surrogate Carraway, offering an eyewitness account of the decline of the American empire, not an invitation to the ball. Periodically, as if by accident, something like real emotion pokes up through the film's well-manicured surface... More often, Gatsby feels like a well-rehearsed classic in which the actors say their lines ably, but with no discernible feeling behind them. Scott Foundas, Variety 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. DiCaprio looks and feels just right as Gatsby; the glamour and allure as at one with his film star persona, he's sufficiently savvy to convince as a successful bootlegger but still young enough to recapture the hopes and innocence of youth. Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter The Great Gatsby is an immortal American tragedy, but the story's impact gets completely buried in Luhrmann's flash and dazzle... The cardinal sin of this new Gatsby is that it's dull... This film marks the official moment in which Baz Luhrmann's signature style has become self-parody. Alonso Duralde, The Wrap The Great Gatsby is ultimately an epic tragedy, a parable about America, its American dream ethos and its consequences, but the movie's overblown style chokes the life out of any substance the story may have. Rodrigo Perez, Indiewire