Dream On

Rating: 7/10 (1 February 2017)

In January 2016, Aziz Ansari originated an SNL skit where he is interrogated at a police station for insufficiently adoring La La Land. "I meanI liked it! I just didn't think it was ah-mazing!" he protests. "What DO you like if you don't like La La Land??!" is the vitriolic, bellowed response. Well, you'd better get my handcuffs ready. A cynic would point out that every 3-5 years, Hollywood and its audiences remember the musical genre exists, and fall rapturously in love with each new tent-pole release as if its predecessors had never existed (Les Misérables? Chicago? Okay, I'll stop). I'm not cynical enough to dismiss La La Land outright as such, but I am on Ansari's team on this one. Damien Chazelle's follow up to his blistering Whiplash IS lots of fun. It's a boisterous, sweet, massively charming slice of cheese with a sloshing side order of nostalgia. And it buys into its clichéd, pandering familiarity with such outrageous gusto it's almost easy to forget how fundamentally vacuous it is. So there you go. Lock me up, and throw away the key.
Like 2011's The Artist, it's a glossy, heartfelt riff on the overwhelming power of the Classics (here, in a Whiplash hangover, jazz greats receive equal adulation to Da Moofies) and how soul-crushing it can be to fall short in comparison. It's Scorsese's New York, New York for the YouTube generation, if you will. And this proves to be the film's greatest asset and pitfall simultaneously: it plays phenomenally in instalments. Chazelle is a whiz at conjuring moments of transcendental movie magic, riffing on the whimsical, expressionistic flourishes of the Singin' in the Rain era, bubblegum colours, triumphant tap dancing, floating through the air framed by a sea of stars and all. Linus Sandgren's spectacular cinematography helps astronomically to pump up proceedings, as the camera zips through parked cars, swimming pools and past whirling dancers like a caffeine-addled hummingbird. And that opening four minute long take crane shot? Has to be seen to be believed.
But, for all these highs of spectacle come the crashing lows of the story gluing them together. It's immediately, unshakably apparent that Chazelle's script is too flamboyantly nostalgic to offer much that hadn't already been done to death in the 'good ol' days' it cherishes, and it's a shame to see a movie directed with such pizazz be so well, boring. The title, of course, is a double-pun, nodding not only to singing, but crafting enough of a gushy love letter to the mystique and iconicity of LA to make Woody Allen wince. Here, Chapelle trips over his own earnestness. 'An aspiring actress meets a spurned jazz pianist' verges on "Just a small town girl, livin' in a lonely world" in the groan department, and Chazelle never musters up the gumption to deliver any reflexive reworking of the 'star-crossed lover/artists' formula whatsoever. Even the film's fake-out 'happy-ever-after-but-at-what-cost' ending, a melancholic, 'what might have been' fantasy dance break, is cheerfully poached from An American in Paris among countless others, making the film's one seeming deviance from cliché just as ensconced in cliché.
{Maybe the 'La La' is really Chazelle retorting "La La La, I can't hear you?"}
That said, Chazelle's original tunes are more than worth their salt, a handful of charming, bittersweet ear-worms sure to light up iTunes for months. Occasionally, sly humour pokes through the polish - there's a great laugh to be had when Gosling's Serious Musician joining John Legend's pop-jazz-fusion band (meant to signify his artistic bankruptcy in favour of pop commercialism) produces the film's most infectiously memorable song. Still, post-Whiplash, Chazelle's one true love is still jazz, and the film's jazz club scenes come alive with more kinetic ferocity than any of its schmaltzy dance breaks. The 'non-professional singer musical' trope is ultimately a matter of personal preference (Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You takes this poetic accessibility to the next level) but it's effective here, thematically underscoring the dissonance of these two 'good but not amazing' dreamers slotting themselves into the iconicity of legend. It's a shame that they're further marred by consistently murky, almost distressingly amateurish sound editing, garbling the audibility of most of the song's lyrics almost past the point of comprehension. 'Naturalism' is one thing, but it's still hard to fall in love with songs we can barely hear.
Still, it takes appropriately glitzy stars to own up to such a superficially pleasurable film, and it's impossible to imagine a more lovable duo than Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling. Endearingly clumsy singing aside, their respective astronomical charisma easily outperform their less-than-stimulating material. Underpinning her 'adorably neurotic klutz' schtick with a smattering of raw pathos, Stone's gigantic, alien bug- eyes prove capable of expounding almost alarming deluges of emotion. Hearing her show-stopping Audition ballad is so phenomenally moving that it's almost hard to focus on her amidst brushing tears away. Similarly, Gosling proves he's able to look as winningly suave sporting a keytar and red leather jacket as ever, and he's breezy, smooth and funny enough to breathe life into his stale 'frustrated artist.' Nonetheless: restricting the superb J.K. Simmons to a fleeting cameo? Borderline criminal offence.
It's curious to see a movie so obsessed with history and nostalgia playing its spate of cliché so unironically, but La La Land is such a pleasantly dopey ode to the love of creation, it's evidently easy for many to overlook. Chazelle's film is likely best enjoyed outside the spotlight of the awards hype machine, where it's easier to embrace its superfluous camp and profoundly heartfelt sweetness at face value. Still, for a world so riddled with conflict and strife, there's an unmistakable value for a film so silly - episodically on YouTube, if nothing else. Here's to the ones who dream.
-7/10