Review- La La Land

La La Land is the musical that will make everyone, even people who hate musicals, love musicals. It's the follow up feature from director Damien Chazelle's Whiplash and you can't really have two films that are more different. La La Land has a simple story and if you've seen pretty much any musical before, you will have a decent idea of what the story is going to be. Emma Stone is an aspiring actress, Ryan Gosling is a jazz pianist who wants to open up his own club. They meet and they fall in love and that's it. It's just a film about two people trying to balance love with their aspirations for success. Like I've already said, the plot is simple but it makes a few very bold choices in there, choices that I wasn't originally fond of but, on further reflection, I actually really like. This isn't the film to choose for plot though, it's just there to service everything else.

There are essentially two performances in this film and those are the ones you are going into the film for. Emma Stone plays Mia, an actress who can't get a break but still tries and tries and tries. She is a ray of absolute sunshine in the film and injects happiness into each and every scene she is in. In some scenes though, there are moments of vulnerability that she manages to uphold and have them not feel out of place. The real star of the film however is Ryan Gosling. I don't think I've ever loved a man quite like this since Joseph Gordon Levitt but I really hate him too. I mean, the guy can sing, dance, act and he is hilarious, plus he is really good looking not that that has anything to do with it. Ryan Gosling makes me wish I was a better man. Oh yeah, and he learnt to play piano just for his role as Seb, the aspiring jazz musician.He's wonderful. There are also some glorified cameos from John Legend and JK Simmons as a popular musician who goes against all kinds of jazz that Seb believes in and a jazz hating club owner who only wants very basic music from his musicians, respectively. Let it be said though that everyone, main cast member or not, commits fully to the singing and dancing of each scene and should be commended for such.

What keeps this film going above all else though is the music, that joyous, jazzy vein throughout the whole film. From that joyous opening number to the sad and tender strings that play out as the film ends, you will be in love with the score. As that last sentence basically stated, there are songs that run the entire emotional spectrum. You have songs that will make you want to cry like Audition and then there's Someone in the Crowd, my personal favourite, a song that will make you want to pump your hands into the air, stomp your feet and sing along. Of course, there is also the Golden Globe winning City of Stars, a song that somehow encompasses all the emotions the film wants to and needs to touch. Equally spellbinding is the cinematography. Whiplash was a film that was really great looking but, aside for the shot where Miles Tellers hand goes into the jug of ice, it works in a practical sense more than anything. La La Land on the other hand is just stunning. You could take each single frame from the film and frame it, it's that stunning. Just from looking at certain shots, I get goosebumps. Basically, this is one of the single greatest looking films of the decade.

What makes La La Land work so well is that it is such an easy film to enjoy. Sure, it could do with being a little tighter in terms of story and it has the misfortune of being compared to Chazelle's other film Whiplash but it is a genuine delight. So far, I've already seen it 3 times (the most times I've ever seen any film in cinemas) and I think that number's going to go up even further. This is a film that I can universally recommend to everyone and while I originally thought it would get a 9 from me, this film has grown on me from a level that was already great. That's why I'm delighted to give La La Land, for the first time this year, the perfect score of a