AT 142 minutes, Baz Luhrmann’s filming of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novella runs perhaps 50 too many.

Much of the flab is a series of elaborately-staged orgiastic variations on the theme of party party party at Gatsby’s Long Island mansion with New York’s well-heeled hedonists of 1922 getting drunk, enjoying the music (often the party’s best element), exposing fresh flesh while sponging on an unseen host, whose role in the festivities is to lay on the booze and employ staff to sweep up next morning.

Evaluating how well the film reflects Fitzgerald’s novella is probably unnecessary. It’s a love story. Tom has enough money to sustain a high lifestyle. His wife Daisy pretty much does as Tom directs. Across the sound is Gatsby’s mansion. Next door lives journalist Nick (Tobey Maguire) who one day gets something no other freeloader has – a handwritten invitation to tonight’s party.

Through this series of elaborately staged parties, the tension between Daisy and Gatsby develops. The film gets around to investigating some difficult questions. Who is Gatsby? Where did he get his wealth? Was he a hero during World War I?. Do he and Daisy have a history of which Tom, a playboy with well-developed tastes in debauchery, is not yet aware? Is Gatsby’s history a fabrication, an invitation to us to wonder which of its details have substance?

Many people will see the film out of curiosity energised by the film’s notoriety preceding its arrival on our screens. Why not? Its last hour or so reminded me of the promise Leonardo DiCaprio showed the first time I saw him, his knockout 1993 portrayal of intellectually-damaged Arnie in Lasse Hallstrom’s “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”. Joel Edgerton is powerful as the hard-to-like Tom.

But the film’s most satisfying element is Carey Mulligan’s portrayal of Daisy. From the first sight of her, you might be forgiven for feeling that you were watching a reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe, with smaller chest and better brain.

The film was shot in Australia and you can have fun recognising the Aussie actors in supporting roles.

At all cinemas