I tried my best to love this movie.

Rating: 2/10 (29 April 2020)

I am a huge fan of musicals. Whether they are movies or on Broadway, give me any musical and I'll listen or watch it and about 79% of the time, I will instantly fall in love. Now, this was one of the most anticipated movie musicals to be released since Les Mis, and just as a musical fan, I was jumping up and down for weeks to watch this because of all of the hype around it. I was watching what critics were saying all over, and some were calling this "The Best Movie Musical of it's time." I'm not the type of person that allows critics to form a general bias for me. I watch what they say, and go in with my expectations in middle ground. Depending if the film is good or not, my opinion on the movie either increases or drops to the floor.
So what did I think after leaving this movie?
Bored and uninterested to be honest. I really didn't like the first hour of the movie. I wanted to try, but at least with many movie musicals the songs are appropriately placed to progress the plot. The placement of the songs were so random. Like so random that you wouldn't believe. The whole first act it basically goes, mini conversation, then song, then montage. That's basically it.
My second gripe with this movie. The singing. Holy hell. Can I just say, award for highest amount of autotune in a motion picture musical's soundtrack goes to La La Land! The singing, especially at the start sounded so artificial. The ONLY two really well sung songs that are not completely washed with autotune are John Legend's 'Start of Fire' (The only real proper singer in this entire movie who doesn't need auto tune) and the 'City of Stars' duet between Gosling and Stone. Even though it's very clear that those two aren't singers in the slightest, their vocalization there was their best singing in the entire film and I can appreciate that. Also, City of Stars was probably the best song of this movie. Which is kinda ironic since that is the recurring love theme between Mia and Sebastian.
My third gripe with this movie? The plot. Hhhhhh. Basically, to put it short. Girl with big dreams meets guy who also has big dreams. They both hash it out with each other, plan to help each other out, go out on a date (Done through a musical montage), kiss, move in with each other, both are making their dreams come true, things don't go as they wanted it to, their dreams are interfering with their relationship, their careers don't work out, they breakup, girl moves back in with her parents, guy is depressed about blowing it but wants to make it up to her, finds her parents house, guy talks the girl into never giving up on her career, girl goes after her dream again, they say 'I love you,' and years later they are living their lives separately and finding success, and the movie ends with this bizzaro montage of the life they wanted together and movie ends. And that's it fellas! That's it! So another classic Hollywood A meets B story. If they were gonna do this classic reused trope seen thousands of times, they couldn't have twisted it to be something unique? It has all of the hallmarks that make it a musical, but the story was tediously stale. So predictable. It took me about 25 minutes into the movie to predict how the rest of the story went, and it all happened, and I was still bored.
This was considered the 'Greatest Movie Musical of it's time?' I'm sorry, but even as just a movie, this movie was horribly bland.
However, there are a few good things to this movie. That being the lighting in some of the set pieces and settings was beautiful. Some of the most vibrant lighting I've seen for a movie supposed to be homage to the 90's. The directing is amazing and hats off to Damien Chazelle
The acting from Emma Stone was great. Gosling kept that monotonous tone through most of the movie, so I just got bored of his character right away, but he stepped it up towards the end in terms of acting. But their performances were heavily undermined. The best acting moment from the both of them was the table argument by far. And that was the probably the best highlight of this film I could take away from this.
So all in all, this was probably the most over hyped thing I've seen, and it's the most overrated Movie Musical I've seen, when there are much better movie musicals out there. Didn't live up the expectations since it was technically the same generic forced love story.
I'm actually really glad it didn't win Best Picture at the Oscars, and sighed a breath of sweet relief when Moonlight actually won. Because this movie musical is doesn't hold water to the current holder of the Musical Best Picture winner, which is Chicago. It just couldn't be the musical best picture successor. It can't be in there with other leagues of musicals like West Side Story, The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, An American in Paris, Oliver, and Chicago.
And as I continued writing this review, the star count went down. I started my rating at a 7 and now I'm settling for 4 stars. Because this is the most forgettable movie musical since BOTH Cats movies. 1998 and 2019. But to be fair, I don't want to compare it to those awful movies, it still way better than both Cats movies in general.
BUT... but, if Broadway ever decided to take this movie to the stage, I think that's worth watching, because I'm always open to Broadway, and I always try to give new shows a shot. And even though I don't like this movie in the slightest, maybe a stage version could make up for it. I don't know. Maybe. And I'll even buy tickets to see it.
My final score is a 4.
Thank you.