Try it, even if you don't enjoy musicals

Rating: 8/10 (27 January 2017)

I am not a lover of musicals. I have seen and studied the origins of film musicals, so perhaps it is more accurate for me to say that I do not enjoy the 'cheesy' utopian tone which many musicals tend to adopt. La La Land was spectacular, and fought off any potential 'cheesiness' with showing the reality behind the Hollywood dream. It did begin with a musical number which I thoroughly enjoyed, and I believed that the characters breaking into song was so cohesive because it was written into the narrative in such a naturalistic way. Emma Stone's performance was thrilling, she is an actress of amazing talent and I believe she far outshined Ryan Gosling's performance in this film (perhaps he acts better when he is in slower moving and more emotional films). The choreography and cinematography worked hand in hand and I thoroughly enjoyed this fresh breath of air in the film musical genre. Congratulations to the director for pulling this off, I can't imagine it was easy to pitch a musical given the current 'successful' films.