page_title: La La Land
section_title: Critical response
hierarchical_section_title: La La Land / Reception / Critical response
caption_attribution_description: English: Emma Stone in The Amazing Spiderman 2: Rise Of Electro in Sydney, Australia 2014.
context_page_description: La La Land is a 2016 American musical romantic comedy film written and directed by Damien Chazelle. It stars Ryan Gosling as a jazz pianist and Emma Stone as an aspiring actress, who meet and fall in love while pursuing their dreams in Los Angeles. John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, Finn Wittrock, and J. K. Simmons also star.
  Having been fond of musicals during his time as a drummer, Chazelle first conceptualized the film alongside Justin Hurwitz while attending Harvard University together. After moving to Los Angeles in 2010, Chazelle wrote the screenplay but did not find a studio willing to finance the production without changes to his design. Following the success of his 2014 film Whiplash, the project was picked up by Summit Entertainment. Filming took place in Los Angeles from August to September 2015, with the film's score composed by Hurwitz and the dance choreography by Mandy Moore. La La Land premiered at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival on August 31, 2016, and was released in the United States on December 9, 2016. It grossed $446 million worldwide against a production budget of $30 million.
context_section_description: Critics praised the film's screenplay, direction, acting, score, and the chemistry of Gosling and Stone. The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 91% based on 454 reviews, with an average rating of 8.65/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "La La Land breathes new life into a bygone genre with thrillingly assured direction, powerful performances, and an irresistible excess of heart." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 94 out of 100, based on 54 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". It was the third- and sixth-highest scoring film released in 2016 on each respective site. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported audiences gave an 81% overall positive score and a 93% "definite recommend".
  Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave La La Land four stars out of four, describing it as "a hot miracle" and complimenting its musical numbers, particularly the opening scene. He went on to name it his favorite movie of the year. Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune similarly lauded the opening sequence, in addition to highlighting Stone's performance, stating "she's reason enough to see La La Land." Despite being less enthusiastic about Gosling's dancing and the film's middle section, Phillips nevertheless gave the film four out of four stars, declaring it "the year's most seriously pleasurable entertainment". A.O. Scott of The New York Times praised the film, stating that it "succeeds both as a fizzy fantasy and a hard-headed fable, a romantic comedy and a showbiz melodrama, a work of sublime artifice and touching authenticity". Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian awarded the film five out of five stars, describing it as "a sun-drenched musical masterpiece." Tom Charity of Sight & Sound stated, "Chazelle has crafted that rare thing, a genuinely romantic comedy, and as well, a rhapsody in blue, red, yellow and green." Writing for The Boston Globe in December 2016, Ty Burr summarized the effectiveness of the film to relate to audiences stating: "...the movie traffics in the bittersweet happiness of treasuring things that are vanishing, like the unrealized future imagined in the climactic dance number, or those inky, star-filled dance floors that go on forever in old movies, or Hollywood musicals themselves. Or jazz: Sebastian has an early moment at a nightclub where he passionately sticks up for the music he loves. 'It's dying on the vine,' he says. 'And the world says 'Let it die. It had its time.' Well, not on my watch.' In that scene, he speaks for the director. By the end of 'La La Land,' he's speaking for all of us."
  The film was criticized by some for its treatment of race and jazz. Kelly Lawler of USA Today noted that Gosling's character has been referred to as a "white savior" by some critics, due to "his quest (and eventual success) to save the traditionally black musical genre from extinction, seemingly the only person who can accomplish such a goal." The sentiment was also expressed by Ruby Lott-Lavigna of Wired, Anna Silman of New York, and Ira Madison III of MTV News. Rex Reed of the New York Observer also took aim at the film's intention to emulate the MGM musical classics, writing that "the old-fashioned screenplay, by the ambitious writer-director Damien Chazelle, reeks of mothballs", and that "the movie sags badly in the middle, like a worn-out mattress that needs new springs". The South China Morning Post remarked that aside from its racial treatment of jazz, much of the public criticism was towards the film being “a little dull”, the two leads' singing and dancing being considered unexceptional, and the lack of nuance in Stone's character, with Gosling's occasionally seen as insufferable.
caption: Emma Stone's performance received critical acclaim and won her the Academy Award for Best Actress.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "2336", "Image ImageLength": "3504", "Image BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "2", "Image ImageDescription": "The Amazing Spiderman 2: Rise Of Electro", "Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS-1D Mark II", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2014:03:20 18:18:53", "Image Artist": "Eva Rinaldi", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "358", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1270", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6380", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/8000", "EXIF FNumber": "9/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "1250", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2014:03:20 11:42:44", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2014:03:20 11:42:44", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "13", "EXIF ApertureValue": "35/8", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Spot", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "300", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "818", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1053", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "1000", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "1500", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1122", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "220000/71", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "585500/189", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "ac1c69ab3a4ee2399323c2e9d1b249e0"}