Right with the studio logos this movie takes us back to the golden age of cinema – and then it immediately turns into a ridiculous, lovely, dancing-upon-cars song.
In general, I liked this movie. Sadly, it is way too over-hyped. Even though I tried not to, I had very high expectations for it. I thought it was perfect for me – retro nostalgia, tap-dancing and singing! A story about dreams and Old Hollywood and artists! And it does have a lot going for it, with all those fun songs, beautiful cinematography and all that. I certainly understand what the movie wanted to do – but somehow I still didn’t connect with it.
Another movie looking back fondly at “the old movies” was Hail, Caesar! and many people disliked it but somehow they loved La La Land, even though they were similar in a lot of ways (apart from the love story, of course). Hail, Caesar! looked campy and on-the-nose and yet people still didn’t get it. La La Land was pandering and pretentious and suddenly it’s a master piece. Different opinions, eh?
What was the worst about this movie for me was that the main character – Seb, played by Ryan Gosling – was basically just a singing and dancing Noah (from The Notebook). I thought Noah was an insufferable prick and Seb is no better. Basically, he is the quintessential mopey, entitled, “romantic” artist, who is just so poor because everyone ignores his “art”. Oh, woe is me. And Mia is just a musical version of Allie, just as annoying and entitled as well.
Those two are just too unbelievable. Are we really supposed to accept that Seb is simply a misunderstood artist and Mia, despite never having put any work into playwriting despite once watching “Casablanca” in her early youth, suddenly is some dramaturgical prodigy? All while the two of them have the most basic, pretentious, “oh-look-at-me-I’m-so-edgy”-type conversations, that if heard in real life would earn nothing more than an exasperated eye-roll?
Additionally, most of their relationship went unshown. This was explained to me as “mental shortcuts by the writers” but truthfully, if all I get to see from a relationship is a quick montage, a fight and a weird galaxy-dancing scene I can’t really regard it as anything but silly.
Not to mention that La La Land followed two plot tropes that I just can’t stand in movies (especially romantic ones), them being:
a) cheating on your man (you’re a woman in love, it’s fine),
b) overhearing a conversation and then assuming things.
Regarding a), so Mia’s had this run-of-the-mill-uptown-boy-boyfriend and of course he deserves to be left at a dinner because he’s just not Noah. Why couldn’t Mia just have been single? Would it have really made such a difference? It perhaps would’ve shortened the picture by 10 minutes and saved me some secondhand embarrassment. I understand that people consider this sort of move really romantic because it shows how “strong” her feelings towards Noah are but come on, movies. Let’s let go of that. As much as I hate typing this, it makes women look stupid, mean, self-interested and weak.
Regarding b), there we have Noah, listening to a conversation that Mia has with her mother about steady jobs and artistry and he immediately assumes that “yes, that means she wants me to take that job (which is for some reason OBVIOUSLY bad (which I don’t understand, that’s what hard work looks like, bitch, get over yourself)) that I don’t want and I’m not gonna talk to her about it, only months later will I flip my shit over it when she mentions it”. Good logic, there, Noah. I hate when people just don’t talk in movies. Talking would solve 99% of problems in movies. Maybe I have too little experience in the craft and it’s necessary to have these dumb I-assumed-arguments but there are successful films that don’t need these kinds of crutches.
Despite this movie trying it’s hardest to be cool and artsy and all about the dreamers, I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief. People like that don’t act like that and they don’t achieve things like that – not even in movie (“la la”) land. The best thing real life Noah and Allie (the musical versions, too) could hope for would be shattered dreams and bitterness. I know that sounds mean but it somehow makes me angry the same way 50 Shades of Grey makes me angry. It’s not that pretentious dreaming or BDSM is bad, it’s that when it’s shown in this particular, pandering, lazy way that I just can’t stand it.
All of this is not say that movies about misunderstood dreamers aren’t similar to this and that they can’t be inspiring and brilliant. They can, and they often are, as it seems that a lot of movies challenge this topic. La La Land, for me personally, just tried too hard. They were too targeted, they pandered too much. Ironically, all I could do is advise them to “get more real”. It didn’t have to look like this. They had a brilliant idea. And that kind of makes me sad.
In the end, regardless of my qualms with this movie, anyone who finds really nice music and golden-age nostalgia entertaining will certainly enjoy this motion picture (as did I, in the end, kind of). To sum all of it up, La La Land is not as bad as some people suggest but it’s certainly not as good, either.
Outside Max 