And that's why haters and lovers alike may download the soundtrack on the fly as they leave the theater: La La Land is a construct of memories and dream fragments that, without the movie's musical notation, only your slumbering brain could conceive. parkway dance numbers and musical montage fantasies. He's kinder to the audience, gifting a safety net of L.A. We're rooting for the pair to nail auditions, knock out performances, and survive.Ĭhazelle doesn't go easy on them.
Gosling and Stone, perhaps from their own experiences navigating the business, understand and feel for them. Sebastian and Mia are flawed creatives, everyday millennials who wish they could be stock characters in a Hollywood movie. Like the jazz that it admires, La La Land zigzags at the players' tempo, not when we expect it. When La La Land drops the glamorous façade, even the most ardent Broadway opponent will pine for the music to come back on. In retrospect, maybe their L.A.-at-sunset life glowed a little too bright. (No, I know he's a schmuck.) Mia's where's-mine soul-searching screams of privilege. Sebastian prays at Muddy Waters's altar, a noble luddite, but he might be a schmuck. These are not the perfect people we were sold. For a stretch, the flashy numbers disappear, replaced with pensive piano tunes and bickering. Love starts looking like sacrifice to two people who thought they knew what they wanted. Thanks to Gosling and Stone's chemistry, previously ignited in Crazy, Stupid, Love, you could bask in it. About halfway through the movie, after a meet-cute duet and a dance among the Griffith Observatory's stars, our star pair falls back into a pleasant rhythm. Though it indulges in musical-lover catnip, lifting bits from Fred & Ginger tap dance movies to 1960s French operettas, La La Land's metronome ticks back to reality at the all right moments. I see you resisting and reaching for your earplugs.
You don't know how deep a warbled note can dig until you see this movie in a world where Rock of Ages exists. These are actual human people performing actual human songs, rather than Auto-Tuned celebrity cutouts burning $100 million on karaoke. The way you might hum your way into an improvised tune is how every song in La La Land organically comes to life on screen. And their numbers, a mix of fragile love songs and bursting-from-the-seams showstoppers, are rough around the edges. Stone is Mia, a barista-cum-actress who spends equal time auditioning and daydreaming about making it big.
Gosling plays Sebastian, a jazz purist who's dying to open his own club. The pairing of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, who can sing just well enough, is the reason. La La Land extends a hand to anyone scarred by a barrage of two-steps, jazz hands, and glitter costumes - and bets are, you'll grab hold. Yes, the movie whispers through dance sequences and ditties, there is more to this genre than singing cats. For 99% of the planet, there's no in-between.īut Whiplash writer-director Damien Chazelle dreams of harmony, and La La Land is his peace offering. Spontaneous song-and-dance shtick either fills your heart with joy or sends your index fingers flying towards ear holes in Pavlovian terror. "I'm thinking he was secretly learning since he was 4, too." That's high praise indeed.Fact: the musical is the most polarizing medium in the history of people pretending to be other people. "I'm, like, skeptical," Legend joked, who has played piano since he was 4. "What other job is a part of your job to sit in front of a piano for three months and play? It was really one of the most fulfilling pre-production periods that I've ever had," he told ET.Įven costar and fellow piano player John Legend is impressed with Gosling's skills. In a featurette for ET, he revealed that for this role he spent hours practicing piano so that he wouldn't have to use a double. In his latest film, La La Land, he plays Sebastian, an aspiring jazz musician, so naturally he took this opportunity to learn to play the piano. He's a man of many talents - he can act (duh), he can sing, he can dance, and now we've learned that he can play piano, as well. It's no secret that Ryan Gosling is a dreamboat, a treasure, a gift to all.