La la love story

Rating: 9/10 (13 January 2017)

I'm not a big fan of musicals, this genre is probably my least favourite film type, and consequently I was not looking forward to seeing this. So this describes my initial attitude.
The film opens with a huge musical number, the scene is set at an enormous traffic jam where the drivers begin singing and dancing on bonnets, everyone eventually joins in. My heart sank at this point because this is NOT what happens when you're stuck in a traffic jam, not at least for me. I didn't need to worry, from there on the one third music blends very well with the two thirds standard dialogue.
Stars Ryan Gosling, a struggling jazz pianist and Emma Stone a struggling actress. Both actors' characters have ambitions. Both are following their dreams. Both sing and dance (Ryan learns to play the jazz piano) – both are extremely competent, and they both have great chemistry.
There are many memorable scenes and a reoccurring theme tune, used to drive the narrative. For instance, Emma's character doesn't like jazz so Ryan takes her to a club and explains how to appreciate jazz and how he hears it – he says "it's all about conflict, compromise, always different and very very exciting".
The film is very emotional, the stars fall in love, but their paths diverge and they eventually go their separate ways. At its conclusion the film quickly plays through an alternate ending, which is brave for Hollywood to finish on anything less than sickly sweet!
If you like old-school musicals then you'll like this. If you like jazz then you'll like this film, even if you don't appreciate jazz you might be encouraged to listen to some more after seeing this.
Highly recommended.