Lee Morgan’s review published on Letterboxd:
To tell you the truth, I was struggling to maintain interest for the first half hour or so here, I'm not a massive fan of musicals and it really wasn't working for me.
Then Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone had their first proper interaction and things picked up......a lot.
I've been a fan of Ryan Gosling for a long time now, he always seems to bring something a bit special to every film he's in and it all appears to come to him naturally and effortlessly but I'm not as familiar with Emma Stone's work so she pretty much took me by surprise here with a delightfully warm and funny performance. Gosling cracked me up again just like he did in The Nice Guys and there's an incredible chemistry between the two of them on-screen which forms the backbone of the movie.
The music is lovely throughout and the songs all work nicely but the story and the performances are the main pull for me and I don't think I'd have minded it not being a musical in the traditional sense. I think it would have worked beautifully and perhaps just as well had it been a more conventional, straight forward drama but I know it would have lost a lot of it's sparkle and magic and I'll freely admit that it's those things that make it as special as it is, so I guess you could say I've been converted. Oh, and the last quarter of an hour or so is sheer perfection.
Anyway, I ended up loving it to bits and I'll certainly be watching it again soon.
And hopefully time and time again for many years to come.
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