You can't repeat the past...

A mixture of excitement and trepidation to see what Baz Lurhmann makes of The Great Gatsby - with generally positive results.

Thumping modern dance music merges well with a sumptuous 1920s look, and putting the narrator in rehab is a clever device - though the final chaotic episode is confused by swapping of cars.

Leonardo di Caprio has the youth and charm of Gatsby, if not quite the mystique; Tobey Maguire is well cast as our everyman guide to the crazy world of the jazz age; and Carey Mulligan is beautiful and empty, just as she should be.

The phone is used to great effect as a repeated motif of bad news for the men around Daisy: the shrill ring disturbs Tom in the very first scene; Gatsby's business calls constantly interrupt his courtship; and at the end Nick is beside himself when there's no call - because Gatsby in turn is awaiting a call that never comes.

And yet it's not quite all there. The critique of corruption and causal discrimination is rightly to the fore, a mirror to our present day excesses. Yet whilst this is key, for me Gatsby is still a romantic, idealistic novel, and I didn't quite feel the love.

So not like the Robert Redford version? Well not quite. But then, you can't repeat the past...