So Frustrating. 

I liked La La Land. I liked it a lot in fact. It’s an emotional rollercoaster, it’s pretty and it’s well acted. So why is it frustrating? You saw the ending no? That shit hurt me. There is another thing though… 

I’ve seen some people saying that this movie doesn’t fully embrace the musical element it gives itself and to that I say, thank god. I’m glad this didn’t become a full on musical because it didn’t need to. The musical numbers in this movie are not great. The only one that’s even a little bit enjoyable is the bench one where they do tap and that. Apart from that, the vocal performances aren’t great and the choreography, mostly in the opening sequence looks messy, especially because of Chazelle’s insistence on doing the whole thing in one shot. What i’m saying is this movie’s story has legs enough on its own. I get that music is a big part of this story but we didn’t need whole numbers in my opinion.  

With that being said, I did enjoy the performances from the two leads. They have solid chemistry and that was on display here from the get go. I loved the story. Like I said, it’s an emotional rollercoaster. It’s great, smiled a lot & then I felt heartbroken in the final portion of the final act. This movie is a bit too long imo. You could cut 10/20 minutes out of this movie in my opinion. I loved the whole thing about Hollywood & I thought Chazelle did a great job at capturing the reality of it, as well as the general aesthetic with all the bright colours and things like that. When i’m writing this review, it feels like it sounds like I disliked this movie. I really didn’t. I borderline loved it. There were just certain elements of it I didn’t agree with. 

Overall, I’d give this a 7/10. Maybe on rewatch, I’d like it even more but the musical numbers just felt so unnecessary to me and that quite frankly threw me off more than I thought it might’ve.