This is the kind of movie that makes people drop out of school, pack their bags, and buy a one way ticket to Los Angeles. La La Land is a beautifully crafted love letter to the City of Angels, Hollywood, and all of the dreamers that inhabit it. Built in the style of 1950's Hollywood musicals, La La Land relies on a great script and the excellent performances of Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling to sell the romantic, yet surprisingly grounded, story.
La La Land follows the romance of Mia (Emma Stone) an aspiring actress/playwright working as a barista, and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), a talented musician who dreams of establishing his own jazz club but is stuck playing Jingle Bells for a restaurant. We follow both of them as they meet, fall in love, and encourage each other to follow their dreams.
There's a point in the movie where Mia worries that a play she's writing is going to be seen as "too nostalgic or cheesy" and, at the time, it seems like the movie might be in danger of falling into that very trap. We all know that Mia and Sebastian will have their slap-slap-kiss-kiss routine before admitting to their feelings and getting right into a musical number. What makes La La Land special and keeps it from being a simple nostalgic trip down memory lane is when the movie snaps to reality and takes a good honest look at the cost of being successful. The protagonists find out that fully committing to their dreams might make it impossible to live a completely full life. It's up to Mia and Sebastian to make the choice between those two separate, but perhaps equally admirable, paths in an ending that is very human, heartwarming, and depressing all at the same time.
Emma Stone is the major stand out here, giving Mia just the right amount of vulnerability and desperation as she encounters obstacle after obstacle in the paths of her career and her relationship with Sebastian. Of course, she has excellent chemistry with Ryan Gosling, who's playing the suave and cocky character that he's practically mastered at this point, in a romance that's going to make a lot of people take a good long look at the state of their love lives.
It should go without saying that the beating heart of a Hollywood musical like La La Land is, well, the music. Rooted in the style of the '50s, composer Justin Hurwitz's score still manages to feel like something new, particularly due to the excellent visuals (special shout out to the movie's use of vibrant colors) and set pieces that accompany them, such as the opening number on a busy LA freeway or a particularly surreal dance through the cosmos.
Early in the movie, Sebastian is arguing with his sister and says "you say 'romantic' like its a dirty word" which it certainly can be in this day in age. It takes guts to make a film proudly set in a long dead genre and aesthetic, but La La Land manages to pull it off. Its songs and the fact that it so completely commits to its premise and style give it a very classic and timeless feel. Meanwhile, its performances and story keep the movie grounded in reality and keep it from hewing too closely to the movies it pays tribute too. As a result, the final product displays the best of the classic and modern ages of Hollywood.
