Well, my wife and I sucked it up and went to The Great Gatsby, against our better judgement and despite that film’s horrifying preview. We had to see what all the fuss was about. Unfortunately, I did not come away with much of an answer, besides the clue that a large number of women in the audience were happily giggling at every little thing Leonardo DiCaprio did on-screen (I though he was getting a little old for this, but obviously not.) The entire film is so fake looking it is practically a video game. The screenplay is just as dumb as the novel – a clumsy, ponderous, boring love story with sledgehammer symbolism and uniformly unlikable characters. The film’s rap soundtrack is painful and irritating, and the whole melding of different eras really didn’t work very well, unlike Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (1996) where it worked quite effectively. My wife felt that Luhrmann’s technique of pumping-up the telling of the story well past the point of “over-the-top” distracted somewhat from the vapid insipidness of the story itself; I think that’s true, but for me it just as frequently felt like rubbing salt in an already painful wound.

As for the cast, Carey Mulligan’s career is clearly over. It’s a good thing we got to enjoy her in An Education and Bleak House, because the way she’s headed right now – Gatsby, Shame, Money Never Sleeps – augurs very badly. Tobey Maguire is a similar actor, actually, in that he created some excitement early in his career – The Ice Storm, Ride With The Devil – and then slipped into oblivion with Spider Man and various other bilge, while Jake Gyllenhaal stepped into the vacant shell of Maguire’s early career trajectory. Joel Edgerton is emerging as an unambiguously bad sign in movies. All three of these actors are pretty painful to watch in The Great Gatsby (surprisingly, Edgerton comes across the best,) but with material this hopeless it’s not fair to lay too much blame on them personally. As for Leo himself, he has proven in the past he can rescue pretty bad material with his energy and intensity, but this film is so awful it absolutely flattened him. And I have to add: he definitely did not figure out how to say “old sport” convincingly, which is a huge problem given the number of times that unfortunate phrase is uttered in the movie.

But there is another Gastby-like story in theaters right now, one that is actually interesting, well-written, and beautifully acted and directed: Mud. Matthew McConaughey plays the Gatsby role, a fellow named Mud, who grew up a poor nothing, and who has spent years stalking a silly mixed-up girl with a botanical name (Daisy here becomes Juniper,) who he is convinced will one day run away with him. The observer / facilitator role is a young boy named Ellis, who with his friend “Neckbone” find Mud living near them, on a deserted island in the Arkansas wilderness, scrounging like an animal and hatching his obsessive love-schemes, and Ellis quickly comes to idolize Mud as a paragon of constancy, hopefulness, and resourcefulness. There’s even a revenge plot against Mud for a wrongful death which was at least indirectly “caused” by Juniper. Plus the whole thing occurs in a setting filled with docks, boats, water, and symbolism that is a good deal more sophisticated and subtle than the crap in Gatsby.

But that’s where the similarity ends. Unlike Gatsby, Mud is a really good story. It reminds me of brooding, atmospheric 90’s indie films set in the American South, like Ulee’s Gold or Coastlines. It’s a gripping little film that covers a pretty wide range of human emotion with skill and ease. Mud himself is a really cool character, and McConaughey – who is emerging as quite an interesting actor late in his career – is wonderfully entertaining and believable in the role. Both of the boys (Tye Sheridan and Jacob Lofland) are flat-out fabulous. The supporting players – the mother and father, and Neckbone’s Uncle (played by Michael Shannon, another really interesting actor) are all strong, and Resse Witherspoon is good as always, in a tiny, almost symbolic role.

I’d like to further remark that as a portrait of a dying way of life, I found Mud light years better than Beasts of the Southern Wild – both involve people clinging to a moribund, hardscrabble, water-bound lifestyle, but Mud treats it as a delicate subtext, whereas Beasts smashes you over the head with it. I thought Mud was more visually interesting than Beasts as well.

I very highly recommend Mud.

Gatsby, on the other hand, can safely be skipped – I wouldn’t even bother Netflixing it when it finally comes out. It’s really a turd.