La La Land

Directed by Damien Chazelle

Starring Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, Keith Legend

Reviewed by Michael Dalton

[rating: 2/5]

There’s a delicious irony to be found in the third reel of Damien Chazelle’s new film, a musical called La La Land, where his heroine Mia, a struggling actress played with perfect oomph by Emma Stone, goes to an audition and is told that, should her mission be successful, she will star in a film to be built around her and shot in Paris. Those saucer-sized eyes of hers widen and she proceeds to remind us why we’re watching. Boy does she remind us. La La Land is her showcase, her moment, her spotlight. She is a knockout here in her first role since the breakout hit Easy A to make full use of her talents. That’s not to say it’s a good role (its criminally underwritten) but Stone, who fills it with her trademark glee, makes it sing. She’s got it, all of it, and she proves her technical virtuosity with a muscular full stop. She’s infinitely better than the film, one that critics are doing backflips over; David Stratton in his review hailed it as “that rare thing: An original movie musical”. You could say its original, shakily so, in conception, but its finally little more than a pastiche. Such a concern will be irrelevant to its collective audience that, in this remarkably simple tale of boy meets girl, loses her, then finds her and so on, will wallow in the feel good, but average, musical numbers (the chorus line on the LA freeway that opens the film is a kaleidoscopic spectacle) and the ultra-Hollywood grin of its leading lady who in one of the film’s best scenes, sashays down the road with her girlfriends, skirts billowing, hair flipping. I sat there wishing the movie would catch up with her.

Chazelle does surprise us with his vision of LA. For a contemporary film its surprisingly deserted, almost noirish, and it lends the film an almost sensual texture but on top, he’s too busy referencing other iconic films and musicals so he fails miserably when he tries to give His film an identity. Borrowing freely, he seeks our praise by working in nods to classics like Rebel Without A Cause (rather than sit through it the star crossed lovers dash out of the cinema and visit the scene of the crime) and it sags horribly when jazz loving Seb, the leading boy (hardly a man) shuffles in and tickles the ivories. In a role Bradley Cooper was born to play, Chazelle mistakenly saw fit to plant Ryan Gosling (from The Mickey Mouse Club) into the action and he comes off like a drooping willow with nothing to talk about but his dreams that solely concern opening his own jazz club.  He’s nothing more than a cipher and even jazz enthusiasts would agree, there’s more to life. He looks here, he looks there, and when he has to tap his toes, it is there you find the vestiges of a smile, from the ankles down. You wonder what Mia’s falling for.

You see the exuberance and the lovers hit their marks but you don’t feel the exuberance.  Chazelle’s technical mastery was on full display in his award-winning debut, Whiplash, a blistering, cruel nightmare where jazz music formed the backbone and so, for direct contrast, he does an about face and fills the screen with visuals we must swoon to. What a shame he’s made it so damn literal. At the halfway mark, Seb is approached by his old friend Keith (John Legend) who asks him to join his band. Trusting his friend he agrees, but soon enough he discovers to his (very) vague horror that the band isn’t going to keep it jazzy. It’s going to be a hybrid of funk and soul with a smidgeon of  jazz inflection and Seb winds up playing glittering keyboards. Worse still, Mia, witnessing her lover following the herd rather than his dreams, is crushed. How could he do this? Sound familiar? It should. Recycled characters, recycled plot, and Emma Stone. God bless her.