The Story: La La Land is a jazz musical (what! they still make these in this day and age?!) starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. Stone stars as Mia, a barista on a studio set waiting for her big acting break while Gosling plays the confident, jazz-loving Sebastian who dreams of opening his own chicken joint (???) at a very specific location (????). Both of them live in Los Angeles, hence the movie’s title I presume, and are struggling to make their dreams come true.
The Verdict: La La Land received a record-tying 14 Oscar and 7 Golden Globe nominations. Director Damien Chazelle pays homage to 1950s Cinemascope jazz musicals with vibrant costumes and single take tap dance
sequences. Just take a look at the Someone In the Crowd musical number. La La Land is your classic simple but timeless love story. Boy meets girl, they hate each other, they fall in love – all while singing, dancing and chasing their dreams in Los Angeles.
The musical numbers in this film are stunning. A personal favourite of mine is Another Day of Sun – where all these aspiring stars start dancing in the broad daylight, singing about their dreams of being famous. Mia’s journey is relatable to anyone, whether you’re as aspiring actress, chef, programmer, windsurfer – whatever. Those terrible moments where you wonder if you’re ever good enough and times when you’re wondering if you should just give up to spare yourself more embarrassment or to keep pushing on because your big break could be around the corner. The Epilogue had me sobbing ugly tears of sadness all over for five minutes straight.
An interesting thing to note is how most of the singers don’t use that powerhouse Broadway voice that most musical soundtracks feature but sing (how do I put this?) normally. I think it would be interesting to hear the actual-musical version of this soundtrack. And I’m wondering why the writers decided to follow two characters when an ensemble cast would have showed the true ‘chasing your dreams but failing’ better.
Rating: 5/5 Stars
(I actually gave this 6/5 Stars but Ryan Gosling’s singing made me deduct one star.)