Love Letter to Hollywood Musicals Misses Hollywood Ending

Rating: 6/10 (2 January 2017)

I saw this with my 80-something godmother and we both had surprisingly similar reactions. We both agreed that the film gets off to a slow start. It was downright boring in the early scenes, so much so that my godmother admitted she almost fell asleep. The film picks up some much-needed steam when it concentrates on the relationship between Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and particularly comes alive whenever jazz takes center stage.
I found many of the early scenes a bit pretentious. Mia and her glamorous friends are struggling to make it but they live in a really well-decorated apartment, have fabulous clothes, and get invited to so many pool-parties in the Hollywood Hills that you wonder when she manages to get enough hours at the coffee bar to put food on her table.
I also found the film lacking in terms of signing quality. I have excellent hearing but had trouble understanding the lyrics to some of the numbers because everybody seemed to be whispering, which is what unskilled people do when they try to sing. None of the actors could belt out a tune, save for real-life singer John Legend.
Finally, I have to say the awful ending was a letdown. Why make a love letter to old Hollywood musicals if you're not going to give us the ending that Hollywood would have given us if this had been made in the 1950s? This plot has been done many times before and much better: girl and guy are fake and phony; girl becomes star and leaves for Hollywood; guy gets left behind; girl secretly pines for her regular guy; guy finally gets up courage to seek her out and they live happily ever after. Would it have been so terrible to have Mia become a success in Hollywood and Seb simultaneously realize his dream of opening a jazz club but have them both realize they were missing something in their lives (like the love of their life) and then meet cute again and go off into the sunset?
Only one tune was memorable in this movie, mostly due to its frequent repetition. Otherwise, this was only an OK film.