La La Land Review

Having heard all the positive thoughts of people about this movie, and with a clutch of Academy Award (Oscars) nominations to back them all up, I decided to take the future Mrs Judson to see this apparently musical treat.

How wrong can the reviewers and movie-goers of this world be? The answer to that is, ABSOLUTELY wrong. If this is what Oscars domination looks like, then please god help the academy because it is clearly in dire trouble.

The music is distinctly poor, and a plot line seems very difficult to develop as the script wanders aimlessly from one point to another, with no explanation as to why, or how?

The image that this film is sold on is one of the characters Mia and Seb dancing as the character, played by the entirely wooden Ryan Gosling, walks his love interest to her car after a party.

Coming to the scene in question you expect this to be the most endearing scene of the whole film, instead what you are presented with is two ambling characters shuffling along, trying to convince the audience that they are madly in love, but the dancing is frankly badly choreographed, and terribly executed, Craig Revel-Horwood would have an absolute field day.

There is no spark, or real magnetism between Seb and Mia, played by the thoroughly unconvincing Emma Stone, and you certainly don’t care about any of the characters, this movie has been said to be appreciated by certain movie traditionalists, I honestly can’t imagine how?

Frankly the script is absolute tripe, the plot, if you can find one, is an absolute nonsense, the dancing is not up to scratch, and the whole thing relies on the sort of music that isn’t for this sort of film, at one point there is a party by the poolside of a nice big house, with a band, including Gosling’s character, that are trying to sing an 80’s classic, all they succeed in doing is murdering it.

The plus side, there is one scene when you see Gosling in another band, who have sold out a gig, and they do one decent tune, and there is a bit of Hollywood magic in a scene when Seb and Mia go flying around a room, with a backdrop of a night sky with a million stars, but that’s it.

The ending is very flat, as it transports you forward five years, and leaves you wondering what has actually happened, I think you’re asked to believe that, after a totally unconvincing audition five years before, Stone’s character has now become some sort of Hollywood A-Lister, just because she is offered free coffee’s where she used to work, then goes home to her husband (not Gosling’s character) and daughter.

What does appear more sure is that Gosling’s character has at last achieved his dream of mediocrity, owning a jazz club, since they went their separate ways, although this too, and exactly what happened to loves young dream, is very open for debate.

This movie does have its place, unfortunately it won’t be in my Blu-Ray collection, and if, as is expected, it cleans up at the Oscars, then that just goes to show what films like Titanic showed before it, that Hollywood’s back-slapping night isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and definitely isn’t all about talent.

This movie is, in my humble opinion, a complete waste of time and money to go and see.