sparkle

Rating: 8/10 (18 March 2017)

La La Land is pure entertainment. "I am not a fan of musicals," is a mantra of mine, and while I did not exactly have a Damascene conversion here, I was drawn in by the sincerity of the mission, the scale of the production, and most of all, by Emma Stone's moving, complex performance. Her comedy is spot on in the auditions where she is given some wonderfully awful line readings. But the next moment she is brittle and vulnerable, and the switch and range is quite brilliant. Gosling struggles to match her, achieving pass marks rather than a gold-star performance. The ending is a masterclass in visual storytelling, an extended sequence that plays out without dialogue and will resonate with anyone who has wondered about two diverging paths in a forest, and what lay down the one we chose not to take. La La Land is escapism, Hollywood fairy-tale at its best. The clue is in the title, of course. Give yourself over to it, and you will not be disappointed.