A double-edged sword. On one hand, the visuals are absolutely the film's bread and butter. They're colorful and vivid, showing that Chazelle clearly takes influence from that of the likes of Gene Kelly and Jacques Demy musicals but he also builds upon that with his own modern sensibilities as a 21st century auteur. Making for a unique sensory delight, especially for the time, when it was released next to such drab, sauceless films like Captain America: Civil War and Batman v. Superman. However, similar to Maestro: as pretty as it is, something about the style just prevents me from really immersing myself into this duo of bohemians and their... uh... um...
I'm just gonna say it: generic love story.

It's a beautiful and stylish generic love story with great acting, production design, editing, cinematography, but it falls into your usual story beats like every other rom-com, and I don't feel it fully explores its themes and characters to the point of elevating the weak story up. It does introduce interesting tidbits that could potentially enhance the film's thematic core but it fails to capitalize on that in anyway.

Like take the scene where John Legend critiques Sebastian's traditionalist jazz oldhead mindset; it's a really interesting scene that could serve as a jumping point for further discussion of Jazz as a dying artform and how to preserve it, but that's kind of all we really get, as the film falls back on Sebastian's traditional jazz playing that same melody over and over again. And that's what I felt for most of the film really: the pieces were there, and what we see built from them is great, but the whole of a greater film still feels unfinished.

Overall, I enjoyed this. I really did, but not as much as I would've liked to. It's a musical with a helluva lot of style but not as much as substance, and the substance that is there, does not feel capitalized on enough.
Sigh. Oh well.