"G" might be for Gatsby, but it's far from great

Summer G is a music mogul, a hip-hop impresario who has settled in the Hamptons. He strolls the shore in suits, throws enormous parties and stares sadly through wide windows. Then one day he sees the love he lost.

If it all makes you think of a roman à clef about Russell Simmons or whatever Sean Combs is calling himself this week, think again. The initial G is meant to evoke Gatsby, and the movie "G" is nothing less than a modern rap retelling of F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece.

In director Christopher Scott Cherot's version, Richard T. Jones ("Judging Amy") nicely plays G; Blair Underwood ("L.A. Law") attacks the Tom Buchanan part, the vulgar know-nothing who married Gatsby's great love.

Movie review

"G," with Richard T. Jones, Blair Underwood, Chenoa Maxwell. Directed by Christopher Scott Cherot, from a screenplay by Cherot and Charles E. Drew Jr., based on a story by Drew and Andrew Lauren. 97 minutes. Rated R for violence, strong language and adult situations. Several theaters.

Unfortunately, Chenoa Maxwell, who plays the love interest, isn't up to the role, a part that requires a woman to suggest both eternal innocence and endless erotic appeal.

More crucially, though, the movie completely misunderstands the book.

Fitzgerald was fascinated by this nation's promise of second chances; the central point of Jay Gatsby was that he was really Jimmy Gatz, a poor kid who'd amassed a dishonest fortune and bought himself respectability. And yet the riches brought him no comfort.

In "G," though, there is no hidden shame in G's back-in-the-day, no great crime behind his riches, no secret desperately concealed. He's just another ostentatious millionaire. And that turns the great novel into just another soap opera.