Hollywood musical story of budding romance and career choices.

Rating: Null/10 (29 May 2017)

Disclaimer: I like musicals, of all kinds, so I was predisposed to like this one. Plus I like both main actors.
My wife and I watched it at home on DVD from our public library. It is a beautiful movie visually, with the use of mostly saturated primary colors for the costumes, and the sound design is first-rate. It evokes the glory days of 1940s and 1950s musicals.
Ryan Gosling is Sebastian, a pianist and music lover, with a focus on jazz. His ambition is to own his own place in L.A. but has to make a living and plays piano gigs, getting fired regularly for too often going off on a tangent and playing experimental music.
(Of note, Gosling does all his own piano playing, preparing for the role by studying piano for three months before filming.)
Emma Stone is Mia, aspiring actress. To make ends meet she is a barista at a coffee bar inside the movie studio backlot.
The movie sets its style early with an elaborate musical number of occupants of cars all stuck in L.A. freeway traffic. Then, Sebastian honks at Mia when she fails to move quickly enough, they shoot each other the bird, which in movie plot language means they are destined to get together.
Most of the movie deals with their relationship and their individual attempts to develop their chosen careers. The two leads are easy to watch and even though the movie runs right at 2 hours it never got boring for us.
SPOILERS: As the story develops each of them are successful, she gets a big acting break and a few years later she is a big star, married to someone else, and with a young child. She and her husband go for a night out to a club to hear music and it turns out to be "Seb's", he is running his own club. There is a fantasy dream sequence where Mia and Sebastian marry and have a family, but the end is back to reality, they did not end up together.