La La Land

Okay…so this movie came out when I was in high school and I hated it then. It was in fact way overhyped and won far too many awards for what it was. I re-watched it recently with my best friend and I have not changed my opinion but I can now articulate my thoughts on the matter better, so here we go.

First things first, this movie was VERY clearly inspired by and attempted to capture the style of old Hollywood musicals. The big MGM movies that literally marked an entire era for Hollywood. So already we’ve bitten off ALOT.

We will also be analyzing this song by song because that’s how you analyze musicals, and this movie IS a musical and needs to be treated as such.

Technique wise - starting with the very first song - the sound mixing is terrible. The lead vocals vs the ensemble is horribly unbalanced. The whole thing sounds like it's through a tunnel. And it's simply not mixed well.

Another Day of Sun: Our opening song. Establishes setting and literally nothing else. Cool you’re in LA. This didn’t need a whole song, literally everyone on the planet knows how the movies see LA. This did nothing different. It introduced neither of our main characters and it didn’t share anything about the city itself. We have traffic here, we get it.

Damn I was really hoping it was only the one song, but no. The sound mixing is really bad. The music keeps overtaking the vocals and because the music keeps getting quieter and louder it makes the vocals sound distorted and it's truly hard to listen to.

Someone in the Crowd: Okay…it's fine. But the lack of any resolution at all in the first section, in the music or in the lyrics really causes it to fall flat. Then we have a beat in the middle which was beautiful and hit an emotional note but felt incomplete. And then the end of the song was rushed and honestly didn’t feel like it fit. I am talking musically only, please know that I understand that every single one of these things was intentional in an attempt to favor the storytelling. However I don’t believe those things were done well enough to justify its choppy execution.

The cinematography is beautiful. Truly it's a stunning movie. This is where they really nailed the big old Hollywood musical feel. The color palette is nice and bright. Lots of light, great angles, the cinematography is the star of the show.

Ryan Gosling is currently carrying. This is his first real scene and he is giving so much right now. He’s doing an incredible job of capturing and commanding attention. His character is immediately relatable as he interacts with his sister, following him around his apartment anxiety ridden making sure she doesn’t break anything.

He’s hilarious. The only part of the movie I haven’t found flaws with actually. I love Emily Stone but her first sequence was really unremarkable to me, I’m sorry. She’s normally brilliant but so far her performance in Bugonia last year was a billion times better then what I’ve seen from this.

There we go! Her first actual interaction with Ryan Gosling finally seemed to click something in her. She locked in when he bumped past her. Also these auditions/self tapes are so real.

I will also say that Emily and Ryan have incredible chemistry. I mean to be fair I feel like they could individually generate chemistry with a brick wall. Ryan Gosling is the hottest man on the planet.

The dialogue is hilarious. These two bounce off of each other so well and their delivery is great.

A Lovely Night: Okay I love Ryan Gosling…the vocal standards for men are so low and SO much lower then they are for women that we have been conditioned to think he sounds good in this movie when the reality is that he is 1 teensy step above not tone deaf. He can carry a tune, but he’s got 0 range and even less breath support. I can hear that his soft pallet is down and his tongue is not down. His placement is too far back and he’s got 0 clue where his mask even is. Emily is 1% better. She’s mediocre and she’s got this beautiful breathy quality to her voice and at least her technique is better. She’s not doing anything wrong per se - it just doesn’t sound very good, I would like to hear more strength from her. I do think it's partially a breath support thing and she should be placing her sound a little farther forward.

Then we have the dancing in this song, again reminiscent of old Hollywood. The problem with that is that iconic dancers from technicolor movies were incredibly well- trained professionals with impeccable technique that seemed effortless. The dancing in this looks effortless in the opposite way. There was a lack of energy through the limbs, posture couldn’t have been worse and some of the moves were straight up unfinished. And what we're seeing is the best of what they did. Friendly reminder that I went to school for musical theatre and am a professional ballroom dancer.

The writing itself is very strong. They are actually bonding over passion itself. Each having their own extensive knowledge of their interests. That’s beautiful.

“Write something as interesting as you are”, is a fantastic line. I also love his sentiment that Jazz is the essence of human connection because that’s kind of how I feel about all art.

City of Stars: Once again we sit through Ryan Gosling’s horrendously flat voice. Nothing is happening. His voice is giving me nothing but irritation. He’s lucky he’s an incredible actor but Jesus Christ. What happened to hiring singers to take over for actors who can’t sing.

Okay…here’s where I have a story problem because they’ve been doing great so far. Mia’s hair color is different then it was in her headshot. That’s like a cardinal sin guys. No one hoping to get a job would do that. You don’t change your hair from your headshot.

Hey so no offence but Mia kinda sucks. Sits her ass and doesn’t move in traffic, stands in front of the screen of an already started movie…terrible.

Okay they are actually ballroom dancing so I’m not letting shit go. You could have stuck with the side by side stuff and I’d have less to say but you chose to do ballroom so here we fucking go. Their frame is so trash, if you are going to do a dance that requires frame how DARE you do it badly. Body positions could not be more wrong, and once again the posture is terrible. No use of the knees whatsoever, my one week old students do better than that, how embarrassing for you and your choreographer and whoever the hell was coaching you. Be embarrassed actually, that ballroom sequence was so atrocious, and for it to be followed by a much more creative sequence where you obviously used dance doubles (and not very good ones) there is no excuse. Why couldn’t you hire actual professionals? You’re telling me none of the dancing with the stars pros would take the gig cause I don’t believe that, especially with Mandy Moore as the choreographer.

Also…here’s what makes the fact that the two leads have mediocre vocals worse is you put John Legend in the movie. Yeah, you didn’t really let him sing, but he sang enough for me to hear him be better than anyone else I’ve heard sing in this movie.

City of Stars - Again: It's not better the second time, in fact it's boring. It didn’t happen long enough ago for this to be an actual emotional notes. Yeah there was a time jump but to the audience's ears, we just did this. I feel like most filmmakers that do musicals fundamentally misunderstand what they are. You have to tell the story with ALL of it, the singing, the music, the dancing and then yea, the acting and writing. But you have to do all of it and you have to balance it well in a musical and this does not do that. The best musicals in the world are the ones where you can know and feel the story from the soundtrack alone. You shouldn’t need to see the show to understand or connect to it. On auditory cues ONLY you have to be able to tell a coherent story and this has failed.

It’s been City of Stars for like all of Act 2, why. What is with the overreliance on this song? Have you people never seen a musical before? Any? From any era? It's actually making me mad.

Oh you let John sing a whole song…okay team.

Start a Fire: Does everyone remember the Sound of Music live! When Carrie Underwood was getting buried under Tony award winners because she did not have the vocal range or tone needed and had no business being anywhere near that project? Yeah so John Legend belongs in a musical. That’s where he goes, and you let him sing AFTER the two most mediocre, flat, boring and untrained voices I’ve ever heard? That was certainly a choice. The fact that the vocals suck would be less offensive if you actually just made it them singing the whole time. Because then I can’t miss something better. But putting John Legend in the middle of whatever the hell this music has been was an interesting creative decision.

Also…I have nothing against movies with unlikable main characters but Mia is awful dude. She called and told him how much she missed him, he comes home and surprises her. She can in fact literally rehearse anywhere so not wanting to go with him was nothing but insecurity and bitchiness. She’s absolutely insane and starts a fight over the kind of music he’s playing, that’s what crazy bitches do. Ya know how I know? My best friend pauses this minutes before the dinner scene and says, “She’s gonna start a fight isn’t she? She’s gonna say that’s not real jazz, cause you told me that's not what jazz is”...and I love her but that bitch is crazy. And that prediction came from a place of knowing it's something she would do.

Audition: Again, Emily’s voice is very soft in tone but it's also just weak. She has zero clue where to breathe. This is her best song but it's still not great. It's not even good, it's just better.

Look the emotional core of the story is fantastic so for untrained people who watch for entertainment and don’t use their brains when they watch movies I’d imagine it was a very enjoyable experience and I understand its popularity. HOWEVER those descriptions shouldn’t describe award show voters. Industry professionals are supposed to be trained enough for the horrendous musical execution to throw them out of the movie. They are supposed to have enough brain cells to understand that if a MUSICALS, musical elements fail then it is a bad movie. If a film can’t stand against its genre then it's not a good film. If a film falls apart when you remove its genre specific elements, then it's not a good film of that genre. So while the film itself might be decent, if you ripped out the musical elements the film would be better. Making it a truly terrible musical. Its music awards are an actual joke. Not a single song is written or sung well enough (save for John Legend) to be nominated for anything. And this was up against Lin Manuel Miranda and I will forever be pissed off about it.

The music is SO repetitive. Guys having a theme is cool and all but a theme or motif doesn’t mean it's played every 30 seconds. That’s simply not how that works, in fact the more you play it the less emotional impact it has.

We love a good dream dance sequence. How very Singing in the Rain/Oklahoma/American in Paris of you. I appreciate that at least the structure and style of the film is doing its best to pay homage to major movie musicals of the past. That is an important element to making this film work and they did it well.

Oh good more ballroom with no shaping, choppy footwork, non-existent rise and fall, no body contact and truly a terrified look in their eyes. They aren’t acting right now, they are trying and they are trying very hard which sort of makes the fact that they suck at ballroom so much worse. 3 months for jazz, tap and ballroom training was not enough. 3 months of JUST ballroom isn’t enough to make what they were attempting look good for untrained dancers. They should have used their doubles more or cut the ballroom altogether. It was done so poorly it shouldn’t have been done at all.

I understand its popularity, if you aren't musically trained and you like it I understand. What will never make sense however is professionals awarding the music. And the movie as a whole. If massive elements of your film are bad, then your film is bad. I'm not sorry and unless you have more training then I do I will not be accepting dissenting opinions.