Lost in Hollywood

Rating: 5/10 (11 March 2017)

My wife and I were really looking forward to watching this Oscar-festooned movie. I personally love Golden Age Hollywood musicals and had read all the press about its revamping the genre for the present - day. Somehow though it just didn't connect with us.
I did like the cinematography with its Hopper-like depiction of low-rent Hollywood, from film-sets to restaurants and jazz-clubs. There were no sex-scenes, the camera work was fluid throughout and I appreciated the references to the past with the old-style titles and old-fashioned scene-changes too.
But after that, I struggled to relate to the characters. Ryan Gosling's character is determined to make his actress girl-friend like jazz and by extension the viewer but I know what I like and I didn't warm to the live club scenes with Gosling immersing himself in his music. Likewise Stone's travails with her acting ambitions as she flunks screen-tests and takes a waitress job as she seeks her big break. I didn't hate them, I just didn't care for them.
The songs were okay I guess but sitting here a day after watching it, none of them is still in my memory. The set-piece choreographed numbers are likewise easy on the eye but again aren't particularly memorable especially compared to those from yesteryear. Gosling and Stone are okay in their roles and work hard at their singing and dancing but I didn't sense much chemistry between them. I certainly didn't think I was watching Hollywood's best actress of the year. It probably helps to like and appreciate characters like this if you're in the entertainment industry otherwise they can come across, as here, as precious and vain.
Maybe I'm being too critical in invoking the great films it seems to draw upon for inspiration but the fact that it got decorated with six Oscars the other day for me says something about the quality of competition today compared to earlier times.
No, if I want to see a movie about a struggling jazz musician and his ambitious girlfriend, I'll go back and watch "New York New York".