La La Land

La La Land is one of those movies that make you fall a little in love with movies again, even if you’ve had your heart broken by clunky musicals before. It’s a jazzy, pastel-soaked valentine to old-school Hollywood, with Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling sliding into their roles as struggling artist types in Los Angeles. She’s an aspiring actress, he’s a purist jazz pianist, and their paths keep crossing in ways that are sometimes awkward but ring sweetly true. From the opening “Another Day of Sun” highway number, you instantly feel the film’s breezy confidence and ambition. It’s like director Damien Chazelle threw down the gauntlet: yes, we’re singing on the 110 Freeway and you’re just going to have to be on board.

What really stood out for me is how alive the city of LA feels throughout – not in the touristy, star-maps way, but in the everyday struggle of audition queues, coffee shop shifts, and dodgy bars trying to keep live music afloat. The cinematography glows with primary colors and nighttime neon, often bathing everything in a storybook haze. There’s a magic to it, but also a weariness. When Stone’s Mia gazes out over the city’s twinkling lights, you feel both the scale of her dreams and how easily they could slip out of reach.

I have to talk about the chemistry between Stone and Gosling. It’s not electric in the traditional, swooning sense – but there’s a vulnerability and awkwardness in their dances and shared glances that feels real. Their banter is charming without being sharp or jaded. Stone, especially, is kind of a revelation. Her big audition number leaves her voice breaking at the edges, which somehow makes the emotional punch land even harder. You’re with her, rooting for her not just to land a part, but to hold onto her sense of self.

Musically, La La Land pulls off something tricky. It borrows the playful, bouncy energy of MGM classics, but drops jazz musings and wistful ballads that rarely stick in your head the way, say, Grease or The Sound of Music do. “City of Stars” is probably the catchiest, but even that gets under your skin more for its fragile mood than for its melody. Honestly, if you want toe-tapping tunes in a musical, you will probably find the individual songs here more background moods than earworms.

The film rides a fine line with nostalgia. Sometimes this works beautifully, as in the planetarium dance sequence, which feels like a modern answer to the fantasy ballets of the ‘50s. Other times, the movie seems a little too in awe of its own references. There are nods to Rebel Without a Cause, to Jacques Demy’s French musicals, to Fred and Ginger. If you’re not a musical theater nerd or cinema geek, you might miss some of the winks – or maybe you’ll just find them a little smug.

Pacing wise, La La Land takes its time, especially in the middle third. Some viewers I’ve talked to found this stretch drags, and I can see why. It’s less about plot and more about mood – creative frustration, missed chances, and the ache of wanting something big without knowing how to get there. Chazelle trusts the audience to sit in these moments, which is bold for a genre that often relies on brash choreography and major plot turns. Still, it does mean there are scenes that feel less memorable or even a little slow.

There are emotional gut punches here, though, delivered in quiet or sometimes dazzlingly surreal ways. The movie’s epilogue is especially bold and bittersweet. Without spoiling it, I’ll just say I appreciated that La La Land doesn’t tie everything up in sparkly Hollywood ribbon. Instead, it lingers on the idea that sometimes just loving someone – or loving something like music or acting – is messy and only briefly perfect. The fantasy sequences are astonishingly well-edited and carry genuine emotional weight.

La La Land isn’t perfect. Some of the vocal performances are just okay, a couple of songs are forgettable, and the film’s reverence for the past can occasionally border on self-indulgence. But there’s also something so earnest about it, so intent on capturing the weird euphoria and heartbreak of following a creative passion, that I still find myself thinking about it years later. It’s a love letter not just to Hollywood but to anyone who’s failed spectacularly and dared to try again.