In 1992 Baz Luhrmann made a stunning film about a dowdy girl who enters a dance competition, the glitz and glamour were saved for the dance sequences and the characters had a richness so striking, special effects would not be necessary. Twenty-one years after “Strictly Ballroom,” rich subtlety has been replaced by a CGI nightmare. If Fergi were to make a two and a half hour music video I would imagine it would look something like Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby.”

Like many High School students, I had to read “The Great Gatsby” and thought it a basic tale of aspirational fraud with “Huckleberry Finn” and “Fahrenheit 451” far surpassing my imagination by leaps and bounds. Fitzgerald’s idea of living a lie on Long Island while enmeshed in the crippling effects of romantic obsession (though a stimulating literary pursuit) has been crushed and crippled by Luhrmann’s yellow Ferrari special effects.

We first meet Daisy Buchannan (Carey Mulligan) when her cousin Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) pays her a visit as she is swallowed by an array of curtains that dance around like the Bellagio fountain. Nick is a quaint man, a bond trader, who lives in a modest cottage next to Gatsby’s (Leo) mansion. When Nick brings up Gatsby’s name Daisy is caught off guard. He is the mysterious man with lavish parties that everyone around town is talking about. As the plot unravels, we find that Gatsby and Daisy had a past, and he is a man of many faces.

Nick (like Stingo in “Sophie’s Choice”) is a character in fiction that cinema rarely produces on its own: the conscience who sits on the side lines and sees everything at face value. For some reason Luhrmann decides to open with literatures beloved Nick Carraway in a mental institution, apparently that much integrity can make a person crazy? The casting of “Gatsby” is on point, Mulligan’s, Maguire’s and Leo’s charisma as actors are enough, they don’t need to be introduced like a magic show. There are certain moments in the film when the CGI has calmed down a bit and the actors are able to shine by simply speaking. “Gatsby” comes alive due to the actor’s performances, not the over the top wide shots and cartoonish digitization.

I get that the director wants to make art and a Gatsby figure of his own, however what comes across is a bright and beguiling comic book. Luhrmann also has a tendency to overextend himself regarding the books mightiest theme: the green light at the doc, it’s in almost every scene. Luhrmann needs to get back to his characters again and start making movies about actual people, not facades attempting to be more significant than the characters.