Painfully Bad Film Musical

Rating: 1/10 (20 December 2016)

I love musicals, but I must have missed the stand in the theater where they were handing our the kool-aid for this one.
Based on the hype, I had high expectations. I went in thinking "La La Land" would be like "An American in Paris" or "The Bandwagon," but once it started I realized it was more like "One From the Heart," or "Everyone Says I Love You," although both of those dismal failures had better music.
In this film, Ryan Gosling plays a supercilious piano-playing bore who endlessly pontificates about "jazz." Emma Stone plays his vapid love interest, a star-struck barista who thinks she should be a movie star because she has a home filled with movie posters and her aunt once showed her "Casablanca." Once these two ciphers meet, the audience is subjected the kind of dreary conversation one flees from in real life.
The musical score is deeply uninteresting. Emma and Ryan's hilltop dance is supposed to be reminiscent of Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse/Ginger Rogers, but comes closer to Teri Garr and Raul Julia in the aforementioned Coppola disaster.
By the way, the film completely fails to capture L.A. in any way.
Kudos to Emma and Ryan for trying to sing and dance, unfortunately proving that it takes MORE talent than they or most other Hollywood celebrities have to perform in a musical. However, I think that Damien Chazelle should be prevented from ever making another film musical.
If you insist on subjecting yourself to an excruciatingly bad musical, try "The Apple," which is a lot more fun and has better music. To check out good-to-great musicals, see the movies that "inspired" La La Land--the RKO Fred & Ginger movies and the MGM musicals from the 30's through 50"s. Even the recent straight-to-video "Lucky Stiff" leaves "La La Land" in the dust.