La La Land

Twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry movie musi­cals tend to be met with audi­ence skep­ti­cism. For every suc­cess sto­ry (Pitch Per­fect), there has been an unmit­i­gat­ed dis­as­ter (Nine, Rock of Ages). As large, expen­sive, resource-heavy pro­duc­tions, they tend to be a risky propo­si­tion when it comes to the nance depart­ment. So when the word ​‘ambi­tious’ is trot­ted out to describe the con­tem­po­rary musi­cal, it has cau­tion­ary overtones.

In La La Land, writer/​director Damien Chazelle not only ful­fils that ambi­tion, but tack­les the idea of whether it’s time to con­sign the genre to his­to­ry. In so doing, he rein­vig­o­rates the unabashed song-and-dance styling of the clas­sic MGM musi­cal. In spite of its mod­ern set­ting, the film is a proud­ly ret­ro­grade exer­cise in sug­ary escapism. Locat­ed in a dreamy alter­na­tive Los Ange­les, its pro­tag­o­nists oat through the Grif­fiths Obser­va­to­ry and scam­per across old-timey stu­dio sound­stages. It’s an imag­i­nary, rose-tint­ed cityscape that’d make any hard-nosed Ange­leno red in the face.

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The film opens with a lav­ish musi­cal set-piece fea­tur­ing dri­vers danc­ing over car rooftops dur­ing a bumper-to-bumper traf­fic jam. With splashy pri­ma­ry colours and spon­ta­neous bursts of song, it loud­ly announces to the world that it is one of those musi­cals. Mean­ing, any and all cyn­ics can kind­ly make their way to the near­est exit. Retain­ing that star­ry-eyed roman­ti­cism front and cen­tre, it intro­duces us to barista/​aspiring actress Mia (Emma Stone, the per­fect ingénue), who’s sick of the con­stant dis­ap­point­ment of auditioning.

She falls in love with Ryan Gosling’s Sebas­t­ian, an under­em­ployed jazz pianist. It takes Gosling and Stone’s com­bined star pow­er – brought togeth­er in a sort of reverse meet cute – for La La Land to real­ly find its feet. The film kicks into a full-bore charm offen­sive as our way­ward pro­tag­o­nists tap dance through the wee after­par­ty hours, a peachy-lilac glow radi­at­ing from the city skyline.

While the stars make up for their lack of musi­cal skill with fizzy chem­istry, it’s hard to say they’d cut it if an old-guard musi­cal pro­duc­er like Arthur Freed were in charge. The songs aren’t bad so much as for­get­table, with the notable excep­tion of the for­lorn jazz piano refrain which draws the pair togeth­er. There may not be a sin­gle ​‘big’ toe-tap­ping num­ber in the whole film. Still, Gosling goes full Bran­do in Guys and Dolls here, lean­ing on his not-incon­sid­er­able charis­ma to make up for his lack of pipes.

Chazelle’s Los Ange­les is a refuge for all-or-noth­ing dream­ers, where the ghosts of cin­e­ma loom large – from Gene Kel­ly to James Dean. You can count each ref­er­ence until you run out of dig­its, leav­ing La La Land open to accu­sa­tions of pas­tiche. But that dis­counts how open-heart­ed­ly the film pro­fess­es its love for the genre, and how hard it works to prove that the movie musi­cal still has mileage.

It may be cri­tiqued as an out­lier – a late­com­er to an art form which long ago had its hey­day – but as the two leads tap dance through park­ing lots and old pic­ture palaces, a lyric from jazz great Chet Bak­er comes to mind: ​‘I’m full of fool­ish song’. And with La La Land’s glit­ter­ing jew­el tones and gush­ing romance, it’s hard not to feel the same.