Zings ain't what they used to be

Rating: 6/10 (20 January 2017)

After rave reviews and the Golden Globes there's now an Oscar/Bafta buzz attached to LA :LA LAND. Sorry to rain on the big parade but I was not blown away. Yes, there's some charm here with all the homage to the Golden Age of romantic musicals, and Ryan Gosling remains the most charismatic of today's young stars, but the music simply isn't musical enough. Gosling and Emma Stone can just about carry a song and do a bit of amateur hoofing, but really the singing is nearly as ragged as it was in the screen version of LES MISERABLES and the dancing is about as far from Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly as the first round of 'Dancing With the Stars'.
OK, Kelly and Astaire (and Ginger Rogers and other co-stars of theirs) did not have great singing voices, but they were fantastic dancers and the song-and-dance numbers in their movies were never less than dazzling. The closest LA LA LAND comes to dazzling is in the final routine, a low-rent tribute to AN American IN Paris, but it just doesn't have enough dazzle. As musicals go, fings ain't what they used to be.
The jazz club scenes hit the only high spots. Gosling really looks as if he's creating magic on the piano, but there's no magic in his singing or his dancing – nor in Stone's, who alas doesn't have her co-star's redeeming charisma. The love-story has a certain amount of charm but, like the music, it could do with a bit more 'zing'.
The Golden Age nostalgia also extends to a clunky tribute to REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. But nostalgia just isn't enough and there's too much clunkiness on display here. They say there isn't the money to create great musicals like we had in MGM's heyday. Surely it would take only a fraction of the budget for a CGI-heavy action movie or space opera to hire some first-rate dancers and singers who can act - or, if we must, actors who can sing (or mime to a better singer)? SINGIN' IN THE RAIN cannot have been a big-budget production, but it's still the greatest of the greats.