Katie’s review published on Letterboxd:
When La La Land first premiered at the Venice Film Festival in August in 2016, it received a mostly positive response with most of the praise going towards the leading performances by Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling and Damien Chazelle’s directing. The positivity surrounding La La Land continued as it was shown at other film festivals, including London. Because of this, it quickly became one of my most anticipated films of 2017 when it was released in the UK. My expectations for La La Land were high and fortunately it didn’t disappoint and it quickly became one of my favourite films. Although the ending is emotional, for the majority of its 128 minute runtime, La La Land is rarely anything less than inspiring, powerful, exciting and entertaining. La La Land is at its best during its energetic musical numbers, especially the unforgettable opening sequence, Another Day of Sun, which sees drivers stuck in traffic exiting their cars and singing and dancing together. The film then follows the main characters, Mia and Sebastian, who are both ambitious and each want to follow their dreams but struggle to balance their careers with their relationship. Stone and Gosling share chemistry which isn’t surprising considering it’s their third film together after appearing in Crazy, Stupid, Love and Gangster Squad. I think that Stone thoroughly deserved to win Best Actress at the 89th Academy Awards as she portrays Mia as an ambitious dreamer but also a hopeless romantic. Stone brings her bubbly personality to Mia, making her an easy character to like. Gosling is perfectly charming as Sebastian, however, I do think that he’s delivered better performances in other films.
La La Land is an uplifting, feel-good musical with outstanding performances from Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.
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