La La Land Review

Tien-Li Hsiung

La La Land is a musical romance film directed and written by Damien Chazelle, starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. La La Land tells the story of aspiring actress Mia Dolan (Stone) and her relationship with jazz musician Sebastian Wilder (Gosling). The soundtrack for La La Land is 15 songs total and includes both instrumental songs and songs sung by the cast and crew.

Without a doubt, the biggest strength of La La Land is its musical score. The songs aren’t just catchy, they also have life breathing within them that makes them more memorable than generic pop songs often heard on the radio. The songs of La La Land also help tell the story and develop the characters better than any dialogue can. Each song serves a purpose to the main story and aren’t just there to be stuck in the viewers’ heads after the film is over.

The main characters of La La Land are well-written and have tons of personality within them. Both Mia’s and Sebastian’s passion for acting and music respectively are completely believable. Both of the characters’ flaws are also well-fleshed out as their dreams start to interfere with their happiness. So whenever they fight over something personal, the audience can completely buy it and it’s not out of character.

The simplistic nature of La La Land is charming, being nothing more than a romantic musical with some comedy elements. However, this simple element can also be, at times, the film’s greatest weakness. Because La La Land is concerned with being only a musical romance, it doesn’t exactly break the mold. This is especially disappointing when comparing La La Land to Damien Chazelle’s last major directorial debut, Whiplash, which was pretty groundbreaking. Whiplash was able to portray one student’s ambition in the jazz music industry not as a feel-good film, but rather as an intense psychological drama that’s more similar to dramatic sports films. Compare Whiplash to La La Land and it’s pretty clear which film took more risks.

Overall, La La Land is an enjoyable musical that features stellar music and decent character writing. It won’t change the film industry forever, but at the same time, the film wasn’t intentionally trying to break new grounds. A more experienced film viewer will find La La Land at times very predictable while at the same time, never boring. La La Land rates 8/10.