Blast From The Past: La La Land

Okay, so it’s time for a new objective going forward in 2024: more random movie reviews.

I have been contemplating this all year, doing reviews for pretty much all–if not ALL–movies that I watch for the first time ever. There are several reasons to do so–not the least of which is that SWO Productions could use the content in the next few months–and I think it’s time to get off the contemplation cycle and get on… the… doing things car? That analogy ran away from me at the end.

I’m crushing the necessary pace towards meeting my movie watching goal this year–at least 200 movies I’ve never seen before, including new releases–and it feels like it’s about time to start getting into this activity. I’m a bit late to the game at already over 145 such flicks this year, but… better late than never.

And what better place to start than with this week’s first first-time watch: La La Land.

La La Land was a movie about which I can sum up what I knew in one sentence: It DIDN’T win the Best Picture Academy Award. Infamously, La La Land was announced as the winner of the award by Warren Beatty at the 2017 Academy Awards, but barely a few moments passed before someone pointed out that Moonlight was the actual winner. Amidst the confusion, the rightful champs took the stage and claimed their statue.

And to me, that was all La La Land ever was: a memeable moment from an awards ceremony.

Of course, what La La Land actually is is the story of two would-be Hollywood conquerors, Mia and Seb (played by Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling respectively), finding each other as they desperately strive to make their dreams of success and fame come true.

For Mia, she is a barista by day, auditioning for roles in TV and movies by night. Her auditions typically don’t go that well, as she is often ignored or interrupted. Seb is a struggling musician who refuses to play by the rules of others. He worships at the altar of classic Jazz and wants desperately to open up his own club, even if he has no idea how to go about doing so.

As love blooms between them, one starts finding success while abandoning their dream. The other’s struggles just grow while chasing their own. Will they find the success and love they deserve? Or will the Hollywood machine chew them up and spit them out?

TWO UPS AND TWO DOWNS

+ The technical aspects of La La Land are magnificent. Director Damien Chazelle really has an eye for his work, and there are shots and takes which are visually stunning and beautifully imagined. I don’t know if Chazelle storyboarded the screenplay or not, but if he did, he really knows his stuff.

The lighting and the sets are all gorgeous, too. La La Land is a film that looks perfect in pretty much every regard. Whether it’s the extended one-take shots or the framing of the musical numbers, Chazelle is just spot-on with his talents here.

+ Stone and Gosling are unimpeachable in the leading roles, and their chemistry is through-the-roof. It would be weird to say they “sizzle” together because the movie is honestly pretty chaste, but they are just adorable together and really come across as soulmates. Their dialogue flows flawlessly, and the looks they give each other are intense.

They absorb the roles into themselves and shine in their performances. It’s the kind of work that makes you incapable of imaging either actor being replaced by anyone else.

– Unless you have never seen a movie or read a book, this is a story you have seen before. There’s nothing new or earth-shattering in the tale of Seb and Mia. Two young people have a meet-cute, after which they wrestle with success both in their personal and professional lives. It’s RomCom 101; this one just has more musical numbers.

I’m often a story based guy due to my love of writing, and that’s what I pay attention to first and foremost. So I was a little disappointed to see the plot to La La Land be so uninspired. There just isn’t much to the character arcs that is hard to predict because it’s all so many tropes.

– Things get a bit confusing in the climax of the movie where La La Land gives us an ending, then rewinds all of the way to the beginning and gives us an abbreviated alternate ending. The point of this is a mystery to me, but the movie does it; and when the flick is already hovering around two hours without this bizarro universe take on things, you can’t assume it was just runtime padding.

The film would have been better off leaving the ending as it is rather than take this unsolicited look through the mirror universe at what might have been. It just interrupts the flow of the closure of it all.

9.5

The final score: review Amazing

The 411

For most movies, picking two Ups and two Downs is easy, because very few movies are so heavily tilted towards perfection or, well, being an absolute mess. Oftentimes, it’s easy enough for me to see the good and the bad in anything. That said… it was extremely hard for me to find Downs in La La Land, which is a movie I fell in love with on my first viewing here. I refer to movies like this as Posture Films; they affect how I sit and watch them. I took in La La Land while upright in my seat and engrossed in the television. It was a hell of an experience for me! It is so beautiful and marvelously acted that I barely cared that the plot was lazy. It’s going in my Top 50 of all time.