tru’s review published on Letterboxd:
When it starts out, La La Land is electric. Grand musical numbers are frequent, everything, from walls to clothing, is a solid block of color, and just about everything is happy. It's grand, optimistic, and fantastical.
Mia and Sebastian both keep persisting to reach their dreams. They fly through a planetarium. They support each other.
And then John Legend's Keith enters frame. Tap dancing turns to arguing. Singing turns to fighting. Joy turns to hate. Fantasy turns to realism.
The way La La Land keeps its balance between the fantastical and the real is similar to the way Singin' in the Rain balanced silence and sound, complete with a big Broadway Medley-esque sequence at the end.
The ending devastates in almost absolutely every way possible, something I was not expecting just an hour and a half earlier.
I've seen La La Land twice now, and it has left me weirdy depressed after each viewing. No, it's not as realically upsetting as say, Manchester by the Sea, but it's certainly more fulfilling. It's really hard to talk about the ending without spoiling the experience, so I'll put up a spoiler tagged review on the third viewing.
Everyone claiming that this is just an electric, happy, surface film, look deeper, it's a lot more challenging of a watch than I expected or even picked up on my first time.
