Yes, despite the extravagant cast list (a blond Leonardo DiCaprio! a blond Carey Mulligan! a nonblond Tobey Maguire!), the decadent special effects, the soundtrack produced by Jay-Z and the visionary flair of the man who brought you “Moulin Rouge,” Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” should be retitled “The Great Flatsby.” It is impossible to reconstruct the entire travesty in only 600 words, but here are a few scenes that illustrate why “The Great Gatsby” is the “Anonymous” of 2013.

First, there is voice-over. Lots of it. This isn’t surprising given the nature of Fitzgerald’s doleful, precise prose. This also isn’t rare. In the 1974 adaptation, Sam Waterson gives voice to the same familiar words of the novel’s narrator, Nick Carraway. However, Luhrmann has taken this frame a step further. Here, we meet Carraway (an expectedly goopy Maguire) as a post-Gatsby mental institution patient. His illness? Morbid alcoholism. His prescription? Writing. So, like with Walter Salles’ recent attempt at translating revered novel to film (“On the Road”), the audience is treated to an endless series of writing montages clumsily hamfisted into a lazy, flashback narrative.

Next, we must meet Gatsby. He is the titular character, after all, and his introduction is accordingly treated with supreme pomp and circumstance. In the midst of one of Gatsby’s orgiastic circus parties, the camera swoops and tilts, spins and dips to reveal the CGI equivalent of Ke$ha’s wildest dreams. Glitter, streamers and scantily clad sirens writhe in and out of this kinetic nightmare when out of nowhere, the propulsive chords of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” begin. The music builds, the party reaches its chaotic height and just as the cymbals chime, there he is, the center of this entire endeavor — Gatsby.

It’s a bombastic and daring scene. Leo smiles with an enigmatic charm. He’s confident but closed off — just as Gatsby should be. But that’s it. As the radiant, climactic horns of “Rhapsody in Blue” fade into some mediocre contemporary pop cover, Gatsby retreats into his palace on West Egg, and with that, the film peters off. For the next two hours or so, we are left with haphazard anticlimax.

These are only two scenes in a film rife with mistakes and miscalculations. It wouldn’t be difficult to add Luhrmann’s off-putting literalization of Fitzgerald’s subtle metaphors. In one scene, when Carraway pontificates about seeing himself in the face of every man, Luhrmann actually cuts between Maguire staring at another Maguire in the street. It also would be easy to describe the jarring editing, the way Luhrmann muffles critical scenes with Maguire’s mopey monologues or the depthless, artificial acting DiCaprio, Maguire and Mulligan provide. But all this would, like the film, be too long and only too unnecessary.

It would be easy enough to say Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” mirrors the vapidity and the hollowness of Fitzgerald’s characters. In this way, Luhrmann far surpasses any other adaptation for his sheer commitment to the idea that “The Great Gatsby” is about surplus. Luhrmann certainly provides an overflow of CGI, schlocky acting, melodrama and visual pizzazz to the point of overkill. But excess is not what “The Great Gatsby” is about. It is, more or less, about the irony of excess, which is a far more subtle and nuanced characteristic to capture. It is a deep novel about shallow people. This is nothing but a shallow film about shallow people.

Contact Jessica Pena at jpena@dailycal.org.

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Dear Leonardo DiCaprio, your adult baby face — which was the entire plot of “Titanic” to my 6-year-old mind — sealed the fate of my sexuality as you became my first-ever crush. My elementary school’s Scholastic Book Fair sold me a diary filled with pictures of you, to which I confessed my deepest first-grader feelings every night. Remnants of that sense of intimacy reappear every time I see your increasingly well-rounded face on-screen.

Oh, Andrew from the band MGMT, I would like to go on a picnic in your VanWyngarden. But seriously, your psychedelic sounds and style make me wish I could experience your “Electric Feel.” No, seriously, when isn’t it “Time to Pretend” that I’m your girlfriend?

A very special shout-out to Andy Samberg. You instilled in me a taste for hot and hilarious nerds when I saw you fake rap about the “Chronic — what? — cles of Narnia.” You’re responsible for my appreciation for the likes of Jesse Eisenberg and Michael Cera. Your dick in a box will always hold a special place in my heart.

All right, all right, this is starting to read more like an acceptance speech than a love letter addressed to multiple men, so I’ll stop. I know I must look polyamorous, but I’m not. (Although, it’s okay if you are.) So, why should I have such wandering eyes in a culture that supposedly upholds the standard of monogamy? Well, mainstream media provides so many delectable male choices that it’s hard not to acquire an ADD of admiration. The immediacy of this media intake makes strongly felt feelings so much more short-lived.

Let me break it down for you. People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive, which Wikipedia dubs “a benchmark of male attractiveness,” makes it sound like such a man would live out his title until death. But like the pope, the man inevitably loses this title during his lifetime to another looker. This example is only a symptom of our tendency to assign seemingly permanent roles to people who only exist to us in passing. No wonder I viciously cycle through each homme du jour like I do soup.

At most, my celeb crushes these days last about a week. Hey, it’s hard to maintain a one-sided relationship with a person with whom you can’t keep in contact. All I know about sexy celebs is what the press reveals about them and what I can interpret from their art. Despite any illusion of intimacy, I have no depth of understanding about them. I can YouTube as many interviews with man candy as I want, and I’ll never know their juicy interiors.

Longevity in, hopefully, mutual relationships is gained when people understand each other outside of the media’s construction of a usually unrealistic image. So this Valentine’s, focus your attention on someone who knows you exist. Or feel free to salivate over numerous celebs in one day. It’s all good. Love, Cat.

Oh, and if you’re one of many celebrity men whom I didn’t mention in this letter, don’t worry. I’ll probably pine over you sooner or later — but not for long.

Contact Cat at ckelley@dailycal.org.

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Now, “Titanic” has arisen once more. In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the ship’s voyage in 1912, the film is being released in 3D. On Wednesday, some of the Daily Cal arts staff went to see this monolith of a movie. In this podcast, we discuss the romance (the attractiveness of young Leonardo DiCaprio), the nostalgia, the epic-ness and the phenomenon of “Titanic.” Enjoy.

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Call it what you may — a rut, a midyear crisis, the tragic existence of those Wal-Mart greeters — I’m in it. I’ve ditched the third person because this time, I’m serious. “TV Land: Season 1” was a wonderful experience. No doubt. But, an exhaustive one all the same. Porn, Conan O’ Brien’s beautiful body, elbow patches — I covered it all. And now, I’m afraid the well is dry, the bucket is empty and the container of horrible metaphors has imploded due to overuse. There’s only one solution. I need Leonardo DiCaprio.

I don’t mean sexually. I have a cardboard cut-out of Vincent van Gogh for that, thank you very much. Besides, Leo’s let himself go the way of a beluga whale. All blubber. No, I need early ’90s DiCaprio. That lanky, rebellious boy with the cornflower hair who shook up the seventh season of “Growing Pains.” He’s the only solution.

Before DiCaprio’s debut, “Growing Pains” was a fine show. It was a fun, if formulaic, family sitcom with a charming cast and and a pre-Evangelical Kirk Cameron. But, it had been on for six years. The jokes had all been spent. The two-dates-to-prom gag, the ole our-sister-is-fat wisecrack. Those good times were gone, and like my current self, the “Growing Pains” pals found themselves stuck with only one way out. Whisper it with me. DiCaprio.

Yes, they went the Cousin Oliver route, as it’s come to be known. It’s what happens when a TV show becomes a tad tired and thin. It goes away for the summer, or winter (there are no seasons in Los Angeles), and when the show returns — Voila! — there’s a brand new kid to make the good times roll once more. Practically every sitcom has done it. From the fairly mediocre “Family Ties” to the relatively mundane “The Brady Bunch” where Cousin Oliver first appeared, shows are constantly trying to update and retool themselves as fresh.

It doesn’t have to be a kid either. It could be a kooky uncle, a changed location, or my best friend, Sir Lester Butterfill XXIX, who will be joining me in this column as a gentleman of the finest tastes. Raised in the lost city of Atlantis by the son of Thomas Jefferson and Elizabeth Taylor, he retains the highest level of both intellect and opulence. He wears only the most exquisite crushed velvet, drinks Napoleon’s personal store of wine and puts Louis XIV to shame with his gold-tipped teeth and wigs crafted from the hair of orphaned albinos. More than Leo did for “Growing Pains,” Lester Butterfill is the only man who can bring this column up from its murky abyss.

It’s a murky abyss that so many TV shows fall victim to. They set up these characters, these frozen-food nutjobs like Jessica Pena, and certain patterns develop and things get comfortable. As an audience member, you become accustomed to the recurring sounds of canned laughter, you settle on the couch and you’re stuck. Eventually, you buy a robe half-off from Kohl’s. Next, you get thermal socks. Then, a full-on Snuggie and all of a sudden, you’re a human blanket — suffocating in your own filth and contentment.

That can’t happen to this column. It can’t be another “Brady Bunch” with crazy Cousin Oliver and his penchant for arson (I never watched that season, so I’m assuming). I need to turn the tables. Me and Lester are gonna take the world by storm with an entirely new column — bigger, badder and uncut.

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As the title suggests, the film focuses on the life of one of the most powerful and despised men in history of the United States, J. Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio). “J. Edgar” chronicles the life of its titular character from start to finish, but not in that order. Instead, it takes a “Citizen Kane”-inspired approach to storytelling, jumping between Edgar’s formative years in the 1920s as an upstart in the United States Bureau of Investigation (preceding the establishment of the FBI) to his later days in the 1960s, where he’s portrayed as an out-of-touch old timer relaying his exaggerated memoirs to his ghostwriters.

Subplots develop between Hoover and the people that played major roles in his life. Most of this is done with the intention of creating a sympathetic character in Hoover, but it all only works with mixed results. The most important person in Edgar’s life becomes his second-in-command Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer). Their special relationship largely plays for some awkward laughs, until eventually succumbing to the cliche of a melodramatic emotional explosion. The always-creepy Judi Dench also makes an appearance as Edgar’s controlling yet loving mother, further deconstructing the tough guy Hoover that most of us are familiar with.

As always with Eastwood’s work, the performances by the lead and supporting cast stand out above most other elements of “J. Edgar,” including the period piece surroundings. Similar to the filmmakers of the studio era in Hollywood, Eastwood has come to be known for his highly efficient directing style, usually finishing films ahead of schedule, under budget, while still earning a profit (music to a Hollywood studio’s ears). Who else could shoot a film set in the 1920s and 1960s in just 39 days and for only $35 million? Unfortunately, the sloppiness in execution is apparent on-screen. From the distracting make-up to the lack of vitality in the settings, “J. Edgar” lacks the vision of similar films exploring the myth of American 20th-century giants.

Obvious comparisons can be drawn to Orson Welles’s “Citizen Kane” as well Martin Scorsese’s “The Aviator” (also starring Leonardo DiCaprio). All three films attempt to sift through the myths surrounding such enigmatic figures as William Randolph Hearst, Howard Hughes and of course J. Edgar Hoover. However, whereas the immense attention to detail permeates every frame of film in both “Kane” and “Aviator,” “J. Edgar” feels consciously unambitious. Just when the film begins to deeply explore its central character, it turns away from the subject matter. Instead, a more apt comparison would be to Danny DeVito’s 1992 biopic “Hoffa,” as both films borrow heavily from “Kane” without achieving the same result. Unfortunately, Eastwood appears to lack the vision that a project of such potential magnitude requires.

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