Fun filled Enjoyment

Rating: 8/10 (30 January 2017)

I'll start off by saying that I am not the biggest musical fan and as such I went into this movie with a certain amount of trepidation, hoping that the Gosling-Stone combination that we've all enjoyed before would be enough to change my opinion on the genre. I'm happy to say that to a certain extent it did!
I have to admit, the all singing all dancing, over-the-top opening scene did little in the way of settling my initial concerns, but from that point on the film was a delight. Light hearted with two excellent protagonists; on one side you have Sebastian, an aspiring jazz musician looking to revive the romance of "old style jazz" while the rest of the music scene moves on. On the other there's Mia, a stereotypical wannabe actress who spends her days as a barista in a LA coffee shop between the hundreds of auditions that she hopes will one day see her "discovered".
It's the age-old story of two young, ambitious individuals who are surely bound by fate to end up together, each with their own happy endings? But aside from the basic premise, nothing about this film is typical. The chemistry seen between Gosling and Stone is one that has rarely been seen in recent Hollywood movies; both play off of each other perfectly and if you didn't know better you would truly believe that the two were in fact in a real life relationship.
But despite these two exceptional pieces of acting (which will surely land one of the two an Oscar), the real praise has to land firmly on the shoulders of director, Damien Chazelle, for the way he assembled this movie. For many the prospect of a two hour long musical is the stuff of nightmares, 120 minutes of singing, dancing and jazz hands. But this is a musical like no other that I've seen; each song serves as the perfect accompaniment to the exceptionally written script; each lyric bares significance and the style and the understated manner in which it is all combined works perfectly. It's for this reason that the excellent as they may be performances of Gosling and Stone are left in someways out shined by their director.
A true triumph of musical film that is sure to go down as one of the great pieces of work of our time. Not least because it actually got a musical cynic like me to truly appreciate the genre and even consider a second run-through in as many weeks!