La La Land

It’s wistful and sad and beguiling.

Gosling is terrific as the coolly introspective yet disarmingly charming Sebastian. And Stone is deservedly generating Oscar buzz for her portrayal of an artist who can’t quite believe she’ll ever be anything other than a barista.

Damien Chazelle’s musical, consistently daring and occasionally sublime, does what the movies have all but forgotten how to do — sweep us up into a dream of love that’s enhanced in an urgent present by the mythic power of Hollywood’s past.

For all its postmodern smarts, La La Land has a heart as big as its Cinemascope screen. This is primarily down to the two leads, without their performances it would only be an empty, if impressive, exercise in dizzying technical skill and style.

La La Land feels like a throwback and also like something we've never seen before, resulting in a dreamy musical that hits just about every note.

[Chazelle's] soaring, romantic, extremely stylish and endlessly inventive La La Land is that rare beast: a grown-up movie musical that's not kitschy, a joke or a Bollywood film. Instead, it's a swooning, beautifully crafted ode to the likes of Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Stanley Donen's Singin' in the Rain.

Every element of La La Land is bound up in a referentiality that largely precludes the outpourings of emotion we come to musicals for.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

"La La Land" does combine Chazelle's fun camerawork with good acting and an interesting musical tone, but it's story doesn't give us enough, and its music feels mostly average. Some of the pivotal moments in the story happen off-screen, and the rest leaves us mostly unsatisfied, there can be a profound message in a lack of satisfaction, but it's story needs more context. The visuals are well done, the camera feels as though it dances with the characters in every scene, but the story and music leave a lot to be desired.

No matter what. This film came out in 2016 — nine years ago. Since its release, I’ve tried to watch it four times, and each time I either turned it off or fell asleep before the first half-hour. And yet, I’m a huge fan of musicals from all eras, from The Sound of Music to Wicked, including Mary Poppins and Mamma Mia. But with La La Land, the magic just doesn’t work. I honestly couldn’t care less about the story of a composer and an actress. A good musical should bring music into a world where it’s unexpected, where people singing and dancing feels out of place — that’s what makes it special. But a composer and an actress? Sorry, but that’s already part of their everyday life. There’s nothing surprising about it. (I had a similar issue with Chicago and Moulin Rouge, though the latter managed to be more original by reimagining modern songs in its own way.) So, for me, La La Land remains — even after nine years and four failed attempts (the fifth one was the charm, and I’m only criticizing it now that I’ve finally seen it all the way through) — completely uninteresting. Not a single song stuck with me (though I have to admit the instrumental score by Justin Hurwitz is absolutely stunning!). Everything else just feels slow and overly drawn out.

I found this movie to be an insult to jazz. The script is trivial, the actors are not the best suited for a musical. I liked none of Chazelle's three films but I found this one to be his worst.