A delightful modern musical

Rating: 8/10 (31 July 2017)

Mia Dolan is an aspiring actress working at a coffee shop at Warner Studios and Sebastian Wilder is a jazz pianist reduced to playing familiar Christmas tunes in a restaurant inevitably they are going to meet. Actually they meet three times before they finally get together. It first it appears that they won't get along; their earlier meetings were fairly confrontational and then she tells him that she hates his beloved jazz. Not surprisingly though they form a relationship but things aren't perfect; they each encourage the other but when one of them compromises on their dream and finds success that takes them away while the other struggles with their own dream.
I'd heard great things about this film and while it wasn't quite as amazing as some reviews suggested it was still a delight to watch. Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling are impressive as our two protagonists; the rest of the cast are solid enough but it is the two leads who dominate. The songs are decent enough but didn't feel too memorable; of course this may be because I've only watched the film once. The story does occasionally go in directions I didn't expect. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to anybody who wants a feel-good musical that harks back to the classic era for the genre rather than relying on familiar songs.