A notch above "Just OK"

Rating: 6/10 (29 January 2018)

I see a lot of 10-star and 1-star reviews here. I cannot see the justification for either. One of the goals of cinema is "spectacle". Yes, you have drama, and comedy. But another way to get to spectacle is the musical. I neither love nor hate musicals, but probably lean closer to not liking them, than liking them. So, I am no expert about singing and dancing. As far as I could tell, the dancing, and much of the singing in this movie was adequate. Nothing blew me away, and nothing made me cringe. Emma Stone has a pleasant voice, and she looked very nice in a girl-next-door sort of way. Ryan Gosling, though, seems singularly non-charismatic, and his singing was "meh". In times past, producers would dub better singers for the actors in certain musicals. Everyone knows that Marnie Nixon provided the singing for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. I saw some of Hepburn's tape from when she was singing those songs. She wasn't bad at all. But she wasn't Marnie Nixon. Maybe they should have done something like that for Gosling. Overall, I found the film a notch above "Just OK".