Breathtaking screen musical ‘La La Land’ hits all the right notes
Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in “La La Land”
Can you think of something you want more than anything in life? You may have to sacrifice something—or someone—along the way to turn your dreams into reality, but Damien Chazelle’s must-see movie musical, “La La Land,” assures viewers that there’s nothing frivolous or futile about dreaming big, as long as you put your heart and soul into it.
As breathtaking as it is heartbreaking, the film flips oft-depicted genre tropes by skillfully upending the modern movie musical as we know it. In lieu of stale and timeworn covers conveniently stringing together mushy tales of love and loss, the movie introduces original songs—except for its winking takes on A Flock of Seagulls’ “I Ran” and A-Ha’s scorching ’80s anthem, “Take on Me”—that prefer to do away with bathetic emotionalism or vein-popping theatricality.
Oscar-worthy lead stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone don’t just demonstrate vocal and terpsichorean verve, they burst into song as they dance in toe-tapping sync to cogently breathe life into the bittersweet romance that blossoms between struggling actress Mia Dolan (Stone) and uncompromising jazz musician Sebastian Wilder (Gosling).
When she isn’t auditioning for parts that often go to lovelier or more skilled actresses, Mia moonlights as an on-studio barista—a job that brings more grief than financial security.
But Mia’s humdrum, by-the-numbers existence gets a refreshing shot of adrenaline when she meets cash-strapped Seb, her road-rage nemesis, who ironically makes her realize that dreams are worth all the hard work we put into them.
Emma Stone
As their friendship evolves into something deeper, the couple hits a game-changing fork in the road that could spell the end of their relationship: Do stardom and monetary stability outweigh Mia and Seb’s abiding love for each other? Can they ride happily into the sunset as their careers take increasingly divergent paths?
We don’t want to spoil the moviegoing fun for you, so we urge you instead to make a beeline for the box office, and find out what destiny has in store for the film’s star-crossed lovers.
“La La Land” delivers a potent mix of drama, romance and pathos garnished with thoughtful (“City of Stars,” sung in various versions and moods, is indubitably haunting) and toe-tapping tunes (“Someone in the Crowd,” “Another Day of Sun”) that add thematic resonance and coherence to the film’s disparate narrative strings.
If you’re looking for eardrum-smashing, octave-breaching song numbers a la Jennifer Hudson’s “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” (“Dreamgirls”), you won’t find it here. But that doesn’t make Seb and Mia’s solo numbers any less haunting (“City of Stars”) or heart-rending (“The Fools Who Dream”), despite the awkward but appropriate hint of strain in the latter’s audition piece.
Paced by Gosling and Stone’s quietly affecting portrayals, the film’s characters dance and sing to tell a story—not just to impress viewers with how dazzlingly they execute 40-year-old choreographer Mandy Moore’s (“So You Think You Can Dance”) exceptional movement pieces.
Other than the dash of whimsy it gorgeously benefits from, the quickly paced movie musical has cleverly chosen to cast actors who can sing—and not the other way around—and that’s all to the good, because the segues from spoken dialogue to sung stanzas feel organic and thus aren’t weighed down by awkward dead air.
Ryan Gosling
More than its sumptuous visual style, lived-in musicality and nostalgic bent, Chazelle’s magnificent musical will warm viewers’ hearts for its subtlety, moments of tenderness and emotional clarity.
“La La Land” has that soul-stirring ring of truth that distinguishes it from other romantic tearjerkers.
It delivers a bracing reminder for viewers that just because we don’t always play our cards right doesn’t mean we don’t deserve to get a semblance of happiness and contentment that’ll see us through life’s bruising inconveniences.
