Creative and heartbreaking

Rating: 8/10 (24 October 2017)

I am quite late to the party, but I finally saw La La Land today. It's hard to give a numerical rating to a nontraditional film like this one, and I have to say I am so fresh from watching it and the feelings are percolating still, but here goes.
I am not usually a fan of musicals, and I must say I found the storytelling at first to be more goofy and comical than serious and dramatic. It took me a while to "get into" it, so to speak, but I finally became interested in Mia and Sebastian's story when Mia requested a certain song from the band at the party that Sebastian happened to be playing in.
Once I got involved in the characters and their coinciding story lines, I got invested in their successes, failures, and relationship. At the point in which Sebastian returns home to their shared apartment, his place originally, and prepares Mia a surprise meal, then she walks in and they begin talking--checking in with where they are both at in their lives, that's when the disappointment set in.
I was hoping it would play out differently. Sure they both succeeded in their "dreams," but they did not succeed together...and to show a "faux flashback" where it shows them together, succeeding, with children...all while he's playing their song, it was manipulative. It showed me what I had wanted for them, and possibly what they had both wanted, yet.....it didn't happen. So the ending was sad and it made me frustrated and a bit angry.
Of course, I see why this film is a top rated and Oscar winning film. I cannot argue that. The music was lovely, and their song was catchy. Emma and Ryan were perfect in their roles....8 out of 10 stars, merely because it had a bittersweet, sad ending, and because it still seemed to lack the intensity I like to see in films.