If there's a whiff of a But hanging here, it is because of this: The Great Gatsby becomes very tedious. Some of this is the fault of the director — there's no excuse for a two-and-a-half-hour running time, and however wonderfully rendered they all are, some of the scenes could easily have gone missing unnoticed. Shop windows can be enchanting but usually only as an adornment, seen in passing. But chiefly the boredom arises from the fact that nothing very much happens. As narratives go, Gatsby is as slender as it gets. The last big adaptation, with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow in 1974, suffered for the same reason. It was a very big movie at the time, and even influenced fashion for a while, but while strong on atmosphere it remained a hard and unrewarding slog for the audience.

As if conscious of this, Luhrmann's actors work hard, entering into the spirit and style of the thing while retaining a refreshing lack of distancing irony. Leonardo DiCaprio is perfectly cast — or perhaps that is because he reminds me of a young Orson Welles. In any case, he invests a lot of care in creating the tightly-spun awkwardness and uncertainty of a rich man who has come from nothing but can still be made to sweat by the suggestion of a faux pas. Carey Mulligan, the voguish young actress who has created a thriving career out of a slightly wonky smile, looks great in the clothes and has mastered the period superficialities, but fails to convey quite what it is about Daisy Buchanan that has made Gatsby devote his life and riches to getting her back. Whole stretches of the film go by in which she says little, and when she does pipe up she seems merely spoilt and petulant. As the narrator (and framing device) Nick Carraway, played by Toby Maguire (Spiderman to your kids), is a fixed sober point, dazzled by his glamorous neighbour, before ending the proceedings a prisoner of the bottle.

Could it be that it is not Carey Mulligan but F. Scott Fitzgerald who fails to convey what it was that was so special about Daisy? The problem is not this or any other film adaptation: she and Jay are simply not one of literature's great romantic couples. The obstacles they face seem flimsy, their back-stories and motivations weak. Most importantly, they are simply not that interesting, and nor for the most part is how they spend their lives. Despite the exquisite settings, it's all remarkably inconsequential. As Oscar Levant once said about Hollywood: Strip away all the phoney tinsel and you'll find the real tinsel underneath.