I’m a sucker for a good musical – check out my Top 100 List
and you’ll find several there. And La La
Land is vintage film musical – cut from the same celluloid as the Gene
Kelly and Fred-and-Ginger classics where an innocent-enough meeting between a
man and a women can suddenly transform into the couple dawning oxford taps and
soft-shoeing their way across a boardwalk or spinning around a street lamp. But
despite the throwback style, La La feels
neither old nor borrowed. Some mature (really old) viewers may wax nostalgic,
but La La is truly its own new thing
– with a classic musical mix of real and dream that somehow feels fresh and
alive… and wonderful.
It’s not just La La’s
style that is classic though – the film’s tale of star-crossed lovers is also a
song as old as rhyme. Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) are dreamers
– Mia, pushing caffeine at a Universal Studios’ coffee shop while trying,
unsuccessfully, to break into the movie business; Sebastian, broke and trying
to revive a career as a jazz pianist on his own terms. Their initial encounters
are less than cordial, but as these tales usually go, fate causes their paths
to repeatably intersect and the two romantics come together as they must.
Their
love and mutual support of each others’ dreams play out in poetic and dreamy
musical numbers with some doors opening while others close. I should be clear here; Gosling and Stone are
no Fred and Ginger. But their more-amateur performances of song and dance seem
to fit naturally into La La Land,
adding a genuine and honest feel to the film. As we old folk and classic-movie
enthusiast would have to admit, many of the old Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly
musicals were not great films – their stories simply quickly-assembled vehicles
to get the over-the –top dancing talents of their stars onto the screen. This
is certainly not the case with La La Land . The score may not be filled with the catchy tunes performed with high skill,
but it is an effective, even powerful story teller. The film’s last scene – presented in front
of the movies’ theme melody – displays this power and is a prefect summary of
the slice of life we just witnessed – a hard review of the potential outcomes
of the real and the dream and the decisions we make between them. We get to
decide at La La’s last note, the
last frame of the film, whether it was all worth it. La La Land is one of the best of the year – a magical must see. 9
out of 10.
