Coming out Swinging

Rating: 9/10 (28 December 2016)

"They don't make em like this anymore" is the thing most people will say when they leave the theater as the credits roll on La La Land, and they're right. La La Land is a 1950's movie musical, made in 2016. It's an absolutely romantic experience in every sense of the word. Romantic in it's visual scope, blazing off of the silver screen in Technicolor. Romantic in it's gushing, devastating appreciation for the art of Jazz. Romantic in the on-screen chemistry between Gosling and Stone, who make a sizzling hot couple for our times. I got a Seldon/Lockwood vibe, for sure. We've all heard the hype this film has been getting, and it's for a pretty good reason... "They don't make em like this anymore". Damn right, they don't. La La Land resurrects an era of filmmaking that many have thought to be long dead. It's reinvigorated a filmgoing spirit that once dominated the entire industry, and by any luck, might just dominate it once again. You can thank Damien Chazelle, who in one decade, cemented his name into film legend, and may almost certainly walk home with a shining Oscar this year.
So with all of this in perspective, did the film blow me away? Sadly, I have to report, that it just didn't give me that perfect experience that I wanted. It's a great film, without question, but the problem is.. I've seen this musical. Singing in the Rain is my favorite musical of all-time. I've had that lighter than air, skip in my step, heart singing feeling before, and it's a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing. Many people, especially millennials will be feeling this for the first time with La La Land, and that is something that I deeply respect. It's remarkable that films can still do this to people, in our jaded, desensitized, and often cruel world. Perhaps this is what people needed after enduring the unusually dark and divisive year that was 2016. A film like this needed to come along and lift our spirits up, and that's precisely what La La Land does.
It's a feel-good romp, and we get this right as the film opens, with an absolutely swinging musical number on top of a disgustingly busy LA highway. I loved, loved, loved the music. It's absolutely the film's strength above all else. I'd give it two years time before La La Land ends up becoming a hit Broadway musical that gives Hamilton a run for it's money. Oh yes, it's that good.