Not Bad but no Milestone

Rating: 6/10 (17 January 2017)

I like musicals but I must say I am a little disappointed by this one. Sometimes it is easier to make your verdict if you compare two movies of the same genre to get your opinion straight - Baz Luhrmans Moulin Rouge is imo in every aspect superior to La La Land: the story more drama, the music, singing and dancing superior, also the settings and visuals - superior. Imo first of all the story of La La Land is - mediocre and so are the characters. The story of La La Land is more of a soap opera than drama and so it lacks of depth, and for a comedy, well I miss the elements of comedy mostly. I like Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone a lot as actors but compared to the performances and chemistry of Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman they just look mediocre - I mean Kidman dying in the arms of McGregor is more worth than all of La La Land.
Also if I compare La La Land with Sweeney Todd it loses - the story, the characters of the latter are just far more interesting, I didn't liked the music of Sweeney Todd a lot but at least the story was interesting and captivating enough to hold my attention. In La La Land I wasn't emotionally invested into the characters and in the music at all. Ofc I am no lover of Jazz but I remember that the movie Whiplash about the drumming kid got me invested and I liked the passion and stuff conveyed by the maestro teaching his classes and the young talented guy. I also liked the tunes. Also another recent musical Les Misérables with Jackman, Crowe and Hathaway beats La La Land easy. Okay I know, Les Misérables is a classic but the execution is just superb. Imho La La Land plays in the league of Into The Woods (Kendrick, Streep & Chris Pine), latter got its problems with the story but imo the tunes and singing performances are still a notch better.
So all in all I would say for a musical, the music, the dancing, the story is okayish, the acting good, but La La Land I would only recommend for lovers of the genre who must see them all. If someone would ask me what musical he or she should watch for an introduction to the musical genre La La Land would not be on my list, or well, far from the top. Tbh - if this is Oscar material it just shows imo that the quality of recent Hollywood outputs don't belong to the best. Ryan and Emma both already have done much better movies before.