Our Chris Corbellini, the best film critic that no money can buy, offers some perspective on the latest attempt to bring F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary masterpiece to the popcorn-purchasing republic, as well as Leo DiCaprio’s latest film that ends with him literally dead in the water.

Alright, I’ll ask: Is there such a thing as a literature purist when watching a movie based on a classic novel? Does everything have to be presented exactly as it was? It certainly felt like it during a recent screening of the latest “The Great Gatsby,” when two to three older gentlemen (or husky-voiced women?) guffawed at some of the line readings or alterations that writer-director Baz Luhrmann made to F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s work. I’m surprised they were surprised. The head creative in this case treats his movies like the muppet Animal treats his drums – if those drums were also dripping with paint and all that drumming leads to a splashy, colorful, loud, um, something or other. If you weren’t all in for Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge,” then you won’t be for this one, and really, why are you even here if that’s the case?

To make this rich girl, penniless boy story fly in the 21st Century, Luhrmann needed three ingredients in his mixing bowl: 1)Unmistakable “that is a movie star” casting, 2)The parties had to look and feel and sound so ridiculous they live up to the reputation of our imaginations, and 3)An audience’s understanding that those born wealthy truly believe they are better than us, and despite it all we still cannot look away from them. “They are different from you and me,” to steal a line from another Fitzgerald story. Or how about this, from the immortal Barry Switzer: “Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.”

Given his previous work history, I was certain Luhrmann had No. 2 covered. He did. Every dance is orchestrated with the proper amount of spastic motion, and every gaudy object and dress in frame is adjusted just so in the 3-D format. Amidst all that decadence the scene that impressed me the most was when Nick Carraway, the narrator played by Tobey Maguire, slipped away for a quieter moment in a library at Jay Gatsby’s mansion, and you could still hear the bass thump through the oak walls. A nice bit of authentic sound design in a movie that has no need for authenticity. This is, after all, not a re-telling of an actual Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, but a version of them that exists in Carraway’s recollections. So if the music department decided to use a dollop of hip-hop in what is an 1920s story, more power to them. The score and pretty pictures attached are not supposed to be specifically memorable, they are supposed to be the cinematic equivalent of a three-drink buzz.

I don’t think I need a *good god watch out spoiler alert* here by saying every move Gatsby makes is to win back the high-born babe that got away. This is a man who pushed his way up out of the slime and got so close to Daisy he can see the green light of the dock of her mansion across the bay in fictional East Egg, Long Island. All of this exposition works the way a disco ball works when the rest of the lights shut off and the music washes over everyone. Then everyone sobers up in the final 30 minutes or so, the legend of Gatsby is debunked, and it’s a hard and wearying fall. I actually checked my iPhone for the time at that point when the angry posturing stretched a few scenes too many, and the fate of a mistress, Myrtle Wilson (Isla Fisher), played out in gaudy slow-motion. Perhaps I’m so tired of reading about the smugness and elitist beliefs of the wealthy in New York City that I can’t stand being reminded of them again on celluloid, in the form of the original trust-fund prick, Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton, a bull). Still, before the movie lost me entirely the crew of rich and richer check in at the Plaza Hotel, where backstories are revealed in relatively close quarters. The director smartly lets the whole ordeal play out without music, going against any glitzy instincts, and it’s the best sliver of the movie. “Mr. nobody from nowhere,” Buchanan hisses of his newfound rival.

While watching that face-off it occurred to me that Maguire, standing on the periphery after being the lead in Act 1, belongs in a different era of Hollywood. A time where wearing straw hats were the norm. The casting super-powers seem to agree with me, given his parts in period pieces “Seabiscuit, “The Cider House Rules,”  and even “Pleasantville” — a film where existing IN a period piece was exactly the point. Maguire rarely goes to dark places, (he’s usually too smitten with somebody) but I have a feeling if the actor were born earlier Hitchcock or Billy Wilder would have pulled sinister or cynicism out of him. Maybe he would have been the figure with a knife pulling back the shower curtain as a woman shrieks out in horror, or the screenwriter floating dead in a pool.  You saw a hint of it during all the ugliness at the Plaza and the aftermath, but really he is a proxy for the rest of us, with the party invitation in hand and a guest’s seat at a dinner.

DiCaprio, meanwhile, has a timeless quality. I noticed in the 2010 film “Shutter Island” that with his paunch and double chin this leading man finally looked like a grown man, not a Teflon boy heartthrob. In “Gatsby” there’s a moment right before he meets Daisy for tea at Carraway’s home, and he slips away into the rain unseen only to gather himself and return. When his curious host opens the door, DiCaprio is dripping wet and there is lightning in his eyes. He is terrified, embarrassed, filthy rich and determined to continue.  That’s a Gatsby for you. When said title character is revealed to us for the first time, the camera is so tight on DiCaprio’s polished face you can almost hear the director bellowing off-camera “THAT’S RIGHT. I GOT LEO! HA!” To drive that intro home further, Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” rises up to meet him as fireworks pop off in the summer sky. Throw into this mix the pleading face of Carey Mulligan as Daisy, who will absolutely kill it with Steven Spielberg one day in some sort of extraordinary-circumstances adventure, and Luhrmann got the performers he wanted and more.

The movie overstays it’s welcome with a run time of two hours and 22 minutes, but don’t quibble with any inconsistencies of this “Gatsby” compared to the novel. Amidst all of Luhrmann’s busy sets and set pieces, the rich folk still behave boorishly out there on Long Island, and Carraway still finds it impossible, at least initially, not to be charmed by all that fast living. And so it goes for the rest of us, too. Perhaps the final lesson for Hollywood here is that harming DiCaprio in your picture means you’ll eventually be able to afford a Gatsby lifestyle. “The Departed” won Oscars. “Blood Diamond” banked $170 million, according to IMDB.com. “Romeo + Juliet?” Over $147 million. And of course Titanic made more cash than any other film in cinema history. And I didn’t even mention the DVD sales. The actor might want to master playing dead, if he hasn’t already.