Dear Hollywood: Please Stop Praising Mediocrity

Rating: 5/10 (6 August 2017)

Firstly I want to clarify that La La Land isn't a bad film. It's fun, has great production value, and has some good acting along with some catchy songs. The story is clear and to the point with a message you'd want your kids to understand. It'd be great for a mindless movie night where you're too busy with the snacks and your mates to fully concentrate on artistic concepts or deep explorations of human nature.
But I was angry after watching it because it is not a great film, or even a good one, it's a passable film. Passable films aren't deserving of 6 Oscars.
I'm not normally a musical person (although I fully appreciate why people enjoy them) but watched it due to the hype expecting some kind of revolutionary masterpiece that would become one of the few musicals I actually like. But yet again I was disappointed.
For a start the plot was bland and uninspiring with extremely little depth. I know musicals generally don't go to much depth but if you're going to be the film of the year do something original. The 'penniless artist' trope has been done many times before and even here they made the characters flat and romanticised.
The film seemed to jump violently between a story about 'real people', a homage to the classics, and a pantomime. Due to this I couldn't get immersed in the story at all nor get to know the characters. By the end of it I realised I didn't care about them at all nor could I take any of it seriously. A film should know what it is, especially one that did so well. The Moulin Rouge knew what it was so well that it had a giant metaphor for itself sitting in the middle of it, but that comparative rant is for another day.
This film did nothing new. It had the same approach as musicals made 50 years ago. There was no 'modern spin', placing it in the 21st century does nothing if the bones of it are the same. And that would all be fine if it wasn't hailed as a masterpiece.
Filmmaking is an art and art needs to change and evolve. Praising this is stunting the growth of a genre that could potentially be so much more. Hollywood is spending so much time saying 'Look how great we are!' and 'Look how great we used to be!' that it's forgetting what makes film great, originality and growth.
Hollywood needs to learn to embrace the new and daring (although something tells me they never will). Great films are being made these days but they don't have the visibility they deserve. This film wont be remembered in the history books, stop acting like it will.