La La Land (2016)

An impressive musical, with beautiful sets, dramatic lighting, nice photography, a great score with wonderful instrumentation and original pieces, lively dance numbers, and quality performances. Perhaps most impressive are the long takes of musical numbers, executed with a degree of difficulty that is probably unappreciated by the casual viewer. There’s also a certain timelessness to the movie, with title graphics from the 20’s, movie star art from throughout Hollywood history, a clip from Rebel Without a Cause, recreated scenes and references from that movie and many others, cars from every era, and music from the 80’s and today. It’s all intentional and interesting.

Gosling is magnetic, Stone is pretty good despite the fact that she doesn’t look like your typical romantic lead. They presumably had to learn how to sing and dance and play piano for the film, an impressive feat.

But musicals are not my thing. The issue, with this one and most musicals, is that once you strip away the song and dance, the story that remains is a little thin.

Definite Oscars material. Musical, artsy, credible performances from attractive young actors, and a romanticized story about LA and the film industry. They love that shit.