A nice movie but doesn't live up to the hype

Rating: 7/10 (6 March 2017)

I finally saw this film last night, 3/5/3017. It seems to be a musical calculated to attract millennials who have never heard of "Singing in the Rain" or any of the other great musical films that ostensibly inspired this one. I have read so much about what a wonderful musical this is but I thought the music was tepid. The songs did not do anything to elaborate on the story or move it forward at key pivot points, which I always thought was an essential hallmark of the musical. I found Emma Stone to be a truly awful singer. Ryan Gosling was only a little better. I also found their personal chemistry to be lacking--I never believed in the relationship that the two characters were having.
They made such a big deal about jazz in this film but I think all the music was original, no nod to even a single jazz classic, and it was jazz written by pop music composers. Like, "Oh, let's have a trumpet solo here. That will make it sound like jazz." Also, I feel like a musical should be a rom-com and not have a bittersweet ending that makes your wife cry. And that ending...it seems like anything that was important happened in that "five years later" period that they jumped over. I felt like the movie was over just as the groundwork had been laid.
I would have liked this movie better if they had not tried to turn it into a musical, and had shown us a little more character development.