Review: 'The Great Gatsby' Is Too Rich and Too Thin

There’s a scene early in The Great Gatsby, Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic eighth-grade required reading, in which Nick Carraway, played by a familiarly wide-eyed Tobey Maguire, sees a car full of black dandies and flappers. They’re sipping Moët and dancing wildly to Jay-Z’s Izzo (the movie, set in 1922, has a modern soundtrack); the camera slows down and lingers lovingly on the champagne bottle labels as Jay-Z raps nonsense like “Fo’ shizzle my nizzle.” Is Luhrmann commenting on the racial politics of the Jazz Age? Is he somehow connecting expensive alcohol to greed? Does he just really like the song?

Turns out he’s not saying anything. Moët & Chandon is an official sponsor of the film, and the French champagne brand is releasing a 1921 vintage to coincide with the movie’s première on May 10. “Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business,” Fitzgerald wrote in a letter to his daughter in 1940. But Luhrmann, the Australian who also directed 1996’s Romeo + Juliet, 2001’s Moulin Rouge!, and 2008’s widely mocked Australia, needed all the help he could get. His initial financing deal with Sony fell through in 2010 after the studio couldn’t promise more than $80 million. Warner Bros. and Village Roadshow Pictures eventually bailed out the production and have been promoting Gatsby nonstop in an effort to make good on their investment. The final price tag was more than $100 million, according to the Hollywood Reporter.