A musical lacking in character and good music. Stop the hype. This film is pretty good at best.

Rating: 1/10 (27 December 2016)

La La Land makes me upset because I feel like there is a great movie in this film.
It starts off great with a big sweeping musical number that's a lot of fun. As it progresses, the movie slowly falls apart. The pace breaks down. More songs become arbitrary (The first song is arbitrary too but I'll let it go because it's just the opening number). And there are many threads that don't go anywhere and lack any meaningful moments. (The couple getting married, they showed up three or four times, we don't care about them, they have no character, they are simply there to make Sebastian, who we also don't care about sad)
The John Legend scenes, although they progress the story, are awkwardly paced and weird. 'Oh, Sebastian uses an electric keyboard now, whoa! Amazing.' It came across as awkwardly placed as the song scene in Birdemic.
What I'm about to say is not criticism but thoughts on the characters: Mia is a terrible character. Sebastian is also despicable at points. The character I related to most is the writer character at the party and he is trivial at best in the film.
Therefore, the criticism is that there are no characters that one can get involved with and relate to in this mess of a film.
Other than the lacking characters, clumsy plots, lack of good music (besides 2-3 songs), awkward conversations that lead to nothing meaningful, the movie is well done. Damien Chazelle is a good director and has an eye for film.
Essentially, people 'worship everything and value nothing' and that is no truer than this film. People worship the superficial of this movie. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. The beautiful shots. The colors. The sad music they play fifty million times.
And the fact it's different. Critics love things that are different because they watch 100s of movies. Thus, La La Land is different and they freak out. DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE.
The movie is way too long. It could have cut out multiple scenes and wouldn't be missing anything ---> That is the definition of terrible pacing
I wanted to love this movie. I wanted to feel everything at this movie. I was told it was 'the best movie ever' and 'will make you sob at the end'.
All I have to say is all these 10 star reviewers are in La La Land.
I walked out of the theater and said, 'really?' Overall, this film is a solid 6-7.