I really
would’ve liked La La Land to be a
knockout for me. I know it is for many
people, and it’s probably the odds-on favorite come Oscar night, but I just
don’t see it, which is a bummer. While
it has a lot of moving parts that I ought
to like, I don’t feel they come together in execution. Of the four Best Picture nominees I’ve seen
so far, this is my least favorite.
Mia and
Sebastian are two young people trying to make a name for themselves with their
art in Los Angeles. Mia is an aspiring
actress aching to just get a callback, while Sebastian is a jazz pianist with
very firm ideas about what music should and shouldn’t be. A series of coincidences brings the two
together, and over the course of an LA year, they’re pulled together and tugged
apart as they wrestle with how to reconcile their dreams with reality. Oh yeah, and it’s a movie musical of the ole
Fred ‘n’ Ginger variety.
I’ll
start with the parts I like. Ryan
Gosling and Emma Stone are both very engaging as Sebastian and Mia. I like both of them a lot in general, and
they work well together. The moments
that Sebastian and Mia pop off the screen for me, such as when Mia jokingly
lip-syncs to Sebastian during a performance he’d rather not think about, are
down to the strength of their acting and chemistry. The production design is really nice; I enjoy
the very deliberate color palette on display in the costumes, the blocking, and
the sumptuous city-porn shots. Also,
this could just be my untrained eye, but I feel they do a pretty decent job
presenting choreography that masks the dance inexperience of their stars. The dancing is relatively clear and
uncomplicated, but I think it looks fairly good onscreen and mostly keeps my
interest.
Most of
the rest, though? I wouldn’t call it
bad, but none of it really screams “Oscar frontrunner” to me. The story is fine but nothing special,
feeling a bit light to me (light as in lightweight, not just lighthearted,
which I don’t think should necessarily preclude films from getting Oscar
love.) Neither Gosling nor Stone is an
especially strong singer – I’d give a bit of an edge to Stone, but I’d still
pretty much just say “fine” – which isn’t entirely unexpected for a movie
musical but is disappointing all the same.
Watching the film, as much as I enjoyed their acting, I couldn’t help
but wonder how, say, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anna Kendrick might have been in
the roles. More damning for me, however,
is that fact that I just wasn’t impressed with the songs. I already talked about this (and my desperate
Moana Best Original Song hopes) in my
reaction to the nominations, but I feel like I need to say this again. Coming out of the theater, the only song
whose melody even remotely stuck with me was the one that got repeated numerous
times throughout the film (“City of Stars,”) and I thought only one made any
sort of emotional connection with the characters or the stories
(“Audition.”) I was actually reminded of
“The Silent Partner,” which I reviewed on a recent Buster Monday. What that story did for silent comedy, I kind
of think La La Land does for movie
musicals. Even though it’s billed as
both a throwback and an original musical, it feels to me like someone’s idea of what a movie musical is like
rather than what they really are. The
songs, for the most part, don’t serve the story in any meaningful way, but the
film doesn’t boast enough true triple-threat star power to make thrown-in-for-the-fun-of-it
song-and-dance numbers worth it.
Oh, and I
have very strong feelings about this
movie being up for Best Sound Mixing.
The instrumentals overpower the vocals in nearly every song, to the
point where I often couldn’t understand the lyrics (which made it that much
harder to get invested in the musical numbers.)
For a movie musical, I would’ve thought a top-quality audio mix would be
a major priority.
Warnings
Language
and some drinking.
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