Charming as can be, visually stunning, but falls flat musically

Rating: 8/10 (16 January 2017)

This movie is so sweet that it's almost impossible to criticize. With that said I felt that the music fell well below the standards of the rest of the elements of the film. Even when simply lumped with other film scores La La Land doesn't rate very high and alongside musicals it fares rather poorly. There is nothing approaching a show-stopper and the background score is repetitive and facile yet these musical weaklings are meant to propel us through long swaths of the narrative. I would say the same thing about the dancing; it's cute but not compelling enough to fill a scene. Perhaps at 2 two hours and eight minutes they were being overly-ambitious.
At their best the song numbers were pastiches of Irving Berlin. The thing is, if you can't write a song half as good as Cheek to Cheek then just steal a song.
This reminded so much of El Otro Lado de la Cama (2002) by Emilio Martínez-Lázaro and written by David Serrano, although the Spanish film lacked the productions values of La La Land.
The idea was cute enough and she seems like a nice enough kid but Emma Stone really doesn't have what it takes to pull off an old fashioned solo shot in close-up. Who does, really? And once again, the song just wasn't remarkable on any level. The idea was cute enough.
The seven note phase of the theme song—as well as the rest of it—just didn't cut it for me and by the final scene I was completely sick of it. And no one would have clapped at the end of his lame piano recital—people who like jazz know good music.
There was some memorable dialogue that was fighting in a higher weight class than the music. "Hollywood worships everything but respects nothing." The story was as predictable as anyone would/could imagine: boy meets girl, the share their dreams and fall in love, dreams don't go according to plan, boy says nasty things to girl, et cetera. I didn't expect much more but I expected just a tiny bit more. Their break up scene was maudlin and derivative—at best—and on top of that he burned dinner.
The photography was wonderful at every step and the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce must be positively thrilled. The city has never looked better in any film that I have ever seen.
So when I have so many problems big problems with a film why would I give it eight stars? I have at least as many reasons to love the movie as I have criticisms. First of all, as I stated above, it is super sweet. Any movie that doesn't give a starring role to a gun is OK in my book. The next important thing is that I love jazz.