I’ve been writing movie summaries/reviews here for 4 years now, and by far the most fun part of this project has been falling in love with films I never would have sought out if not for the list. For example, The Court Jester, 42nd Street, and Yankee Doodle Dandy were movies I had no interest in at face value, but each one of them elicited unhinged giggling out of me. I hadn’t even heard of The Young Girls of Rochefort, but every day since watching that movie I’ll get the melody of “Chanson des jumelles” randomly stuck in my head. My favorite side effect, however, is being so bowled over by a scene in a film that I replay it in my head for years after I see it. Balancing the bottles in Fiddler on the Roof, Ann Miller tap dancing in “Shakin’ the Blues Away”, Stubby Kaye confessing his vices in “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat”, watching Taron Egerton begin “Rocket Man” at the bottom of a pool and end it playing to a stadium full of people being literally shot off like a firework… I haven’t written about it here, but the first time I saw “Naatu Naatu” I could feel myself light up from the inside out of excitement. There’s a reason so many people were compelled to learn the choreography because Ram Charan and N. T. Rama Rao Jr. looked so flippin’ cool when they performed it. I can’t sit still when I listen to it – Obsessed. I’m obsessed.
The director of La La Land, Damien Chazelle, also loves musicals, which I’m sure was refreshing to see in 2016 after the world had been blessed with Into the Woods. You can tell by the sheer amount of references to other, some would say better, musicals in La La Land. This presumption was confirmed by listening to the director’s commentary where Mr. Chazelle name-dropped like 18 different movies without even touching on the ones I’ll reference later. Watching La La Land was an exercise in “Hey, I remember that thing!” over, and over, and over…
And starting with our first crib, this story is framed like Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
Winter
It may be cold and snowy in other parts of the country, but it’s always sunny in LA!
This is a chaotic carpool karaoke fever dream. It wants to be Fame so badly but in my opinion fails to garner the same amount of excitement experienced by high school kids holding up NYC traffic. I hope they at least gave their performers hazard pay to dance on top of those cars.
Moviewise does a great job breaking down why this number feels so haphazard, from the strange focus pulling to the awkward scene framing. One of their criticisms lobbed at “Another Day of Sun” is the skill of the choreography in general, and I’ll push back a little on this point. You can have low-skill choreography in a musical movie and have it succeed in communicating the atmosphere of the scene. I mean, look at Ella Hunt and Malcolm Cumming in Anna and the Apocalypse. They’re “organically” dancing in a graveyard but it works because these kids have rizz and sell it perfectly. You will never again see two teenagers so gleefully walking to school. We also know these characters a good amount by the time this scene rolls around so the juxtaposition of Anna and Josh incorrectly thinking their problems are on the way to being solved and dancing in celebration while the world is literally ending around them is both sad and hilarious. Nobody in “Another Day of Sun” matters, to be frank, so why are we watching them stumble around on a freeway? According to the director there were several people on the crew taking bets on whether or not this number would make the cut because it felt like they were “settling” which… oof. Trust your instincts.
What a time to be alive, what a time to BE a-live… Shit, now I just want to watch Anna and the Apocalypse. That movie is also incredibly depressing at the end, but I’d watch it a million times more than La La Land.
Back in traffic on the freeway, Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) have their first meet cute – Sebastian, after compulsively destroying a cassette tape, honks at Mia’s car while she flips him off. I’m fairly certain all of Ryan Gosling’s on-screen romances start slightly antagonistic.
Let me get this out of the way – I like Ryan and Emma as actors both separately and as romantic partners. HBO used to play Murder By Numbers on repeat when I was in high school for what felt like a year and I had a sick fascination with Ryan and Michael Pitt’s relationship in that movie. Easy A is a classic 2010s teen comedy and I reference Emma singing along to “Pocketful of Sunshine” more than I think is healthy for someone in their 30s. Crazy, Stupid, Love. is messy and fantastic, and the strange and dorky way Ryan and Emma play off each other is so fucking funny and charming. Their relationship in La La Land, though, um… well, it’s something. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
We discover Mia is an aspiring actress that works at a coffee shop on the Warner Brothers lot that tries to give away free coffee to famous millionaires. In her free time she heads to a series of truly heinous-looking auditions, but not before running into someone and getting coffee spilled down the front of her shirt in a moment that is inches away from being added to the Jaime French Female Protagonist Fall Compilation. That night, Mia would like nothing more than to wallow in her latest failure, but her 3 friends (one of them might be her agent?) convince her to dress up in some JCPenny-esque dresses and go out to a party on the chance she might catch the eye of someone that’ll benefit her career.
From the cheapness of these dresses, to the elementary school box of crayons palette that was especially disgusting in the opening number, what is the costuming department even doing for these extras? Mia’s roommates are selling this 100x more than she is. I particularly love the face the girl in the green dress makes to mask Emma stumbling off course and bumping into her. Absolute gold: 10/10. Would have loved to see more of them in the rest of this film, but they’re unceremoniously shuffled out of the narrative after this.
Also, how dare this movie, with all the references to other musicals, omit one for Busby Berkeley in the pool scene.
Leaving the swanky party early and abandoning her friends, Mia discovers her car has been towed. Walking back to her apartment she passes a restaurant with live piano music, and like a siren’s call she’s sucked inside to listen to the wistful theme in person.
We then time travel backward to get Mr. Road Rage’s perspective and an exposition dump from an impromptu visit from his sister we never hear speak again after this even though she eventually gets engaged, married, and has a child. Seb loves jazz, he was going to open a club but he got swindled out of his money, and he’s single (to his sister’s chagrin). When he’s not being outwardly hostile to everyone around him he plays the piano in a restaurant for money until the owner (J. K. Simmons!) fires him for playing off the book. Mia witnesses this exchange, and when she goes up to tell Sebastian she likes his song, he completely blows her off.
Spring
Chester French, don’t implicate A-ha in this.
Seb is placed in another humiliating scenario when Mia encounters him at a house party while dressed like an extra from Back to the Future and playing covers of 80s synth hits. Mia basically says, “Dance monkey, dance!” which causes Seb to approach her afterward and somehow smugly apologize for his behavior. She continues to cut him down a notch while causally admitting to be a failed actress who spends most of her time making coffee for employed actors. This, I guess, piques Seb’s interest enough that when she accosts him later to ask him to grab her car keys from the valet he goes out of his way to escort her to her Prius.
For as much as this backdrop looks like it’s filmed on a lot, this was actually a live action scene that the actors only had 30 minutes to shoot before the sun went down. I’m not going to shit on the set – it’s stunning and deserving of its place on the movie poster. I am going to shit on everything else, though, because it turns out I’m petty AF.
You may be wondering (you’re probably not) why it took me so long to watch this movie. I like the actors, I like musicals, and this movie got serious Oscar buzz. This, my friends, is the dumb reason why:
I just knew, I could just SMELL it all over this movie poster that the musical numbers were going to make my eye twitch. Why are their arms held at different angles? Which one of them screwed up the choreography? There’s no way this is intentional, and it ended up on the poster of the movie. If it was intentional, I have so many other questions because it just looks wrong.
They’re… fine. Ryan can sing, but the number starts outside of his vocal range and he does this thing where he cuts his lines short instead of that Astaire-esque sort of crooning I think he was trying to do. The dance itself is very Fred-and-Ginger as it starts with opposing and combative moves and ends with them in sync, but Mia first complains about her heels and changes into dancing shoes which sparked this thought:
The dance is sloppy and it takes me totally out of it. At the end Emma’s a little too fast and Ryan’s a little too slow with pivoting their bodies and I can just HEAR the choreographer shouting the counts at them because it seems like their feet hitting the ground are the only things matching the music (until the beat cuts out) cause their bodies aren’t aligned at all. Mandy Moore had 2 months to train two non-dancers to perform like Broadway vets (and had previously worked on Dancing with the Stars, which honestly sounds like the best credentials for a project like this), but I think they needed a bit more time for polish. Or at least give them the flexibility to fuck up a bit sometimes by not making this a long shot. For context, Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman were in dance rehearsals for 3 months before Moulin Rouge and they barely danced in that movie, but the director thought it was important to train his actors and it reflected on their performances.
I did enjoy the adorable little slide at the end that Ryan ad-libbed which the director contributed as a Gene Kelly-ism, but that is 100% a James Cagney thing.
OK, now that I’ve been sufficiently bitchy, let me confess I loved the scenes where Seb and Mia are learning more about each other’s passions and falling in love. Walking through the Warner Brothers lot hearing Mia reminisce about her Aunt, Seb opining over jazz being a form of communication… it’s less like the Bro Explaining meme and more like two geeks geeking-out over geeky things.
When they go on their first date to watch Rebel Without a Cause and they’re about to hold hands for the first time in the movie theater I was internally cheering and felt butterflies in my own stomach when they finally connected. When the movie ends abruptly they decide to silently migrate to the planetarium, the location of the most famous scene in Rebel (which is tonally strange considering what happens at the end of that movie). The two of them dancing through the planetarium is a gorgeous fantasy montage that launches them literally into space twirling among the stars.
The director said he was inspired by 2001, The Tree of Life, the fairies in Sleeping Beauty, and surprisingly, the fire extinguisher scene in Wall-E (I also appreciate a movie that features scenes from Hello Dolly). I was instead reminded of Moulin Rouge because I’ll never forget the exact moment I fell in love with Ewan McGregor while he sang, “…and this one’s for you.”. And once I connected those dots I was pretty underwhelmed at the back-in-reality kiss at the end. If you’re gonna flirt with the Elephant Love Medley at least have fireworks go off when their lips touch, or have your actors centered in the frame, I dunno.
Summer
Mia and Seb are now dating. Hooray. You almost want to root for these kids until you’re immediately confronted with the fact Sebastian doesn’t give Mia the dignity of getting out of his car to pick her up and obnoxiously honks the horn outside of her apartment instead. She finds this charming, though, so they’re well-suited, I guess.
Both Mia and Keith (John Legend), a musician friend of Seb’s, give Seb some shit for being a jazz purist and instead suggest he should compromise his vision and evolve to gain a wider audience. Seb begrudgingly takes a gig in Keith’s new band to make some money while Mia works at writing a screenplay for a one-woman show she’s paying to put on at a small local theater with the hope someone important will see it.
See, this movie can be adorable when it’s catering to the actor’s actual range and making things casual.
While they’re separately working on their careers Mia and Seb’s relationship begins to suffer. Sebastian’s band begins to gain some traction and when Mia attends one of their performances she seems to disregard how absolutely elated Seb is to be on stage and instead looks insecure and strangely threatened by his success.
Fall
Mia is prepping for her big performance while Seb is touring with The Messengers.
How dare she not BCC these people – this is a recipe for a reply-all disaster thread.
Seb comes home to surprise Mia and they get in a fight when Mia tries to play off her feelings of abandonment as concern that Seb is giving up on his dream of opening a jazz club to instead be a successful musician? He bites back at her and tries to blame her for accepting the gig in the first place since she wanted him to have a steady job, and the fight ends when Seb starts acting like the whole movie was set up to be A Star is Born or Funny Girl. The final nail in the coffin is Seb’s choice to stay for a photoshoot with his band instead of attending Mia’s show. When nobody else except Mia’s former roommates and like 10 people show up, she tucks her tail between her legs and runs away to her parent’s house in Boulder City.
But surprise! A casting director was there and loved it! She calls Seb’s phone for some reason, and instead of calling Mia like a normal person to relay the message, he drives to Boulder City to berate her into attending a magical audition where they have no script but will film in Paris for 4 months. If Mia gets the part Seb asserts they should break up so she can focus on her career in Paris, as if Mia is shipping off to war and they’re unable to facetime or fly in planes or something.
The reason I love musicals so much is because of the wonder it inspires in me; the awe of seeing someone at the top of their game belting out a song. Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls, Judy Garland in A Star is Born, shit, even Eddie Redmayne in Les Misérables. They’re stealing the air out of me while I fight back tears. This is Emma Stone’s big moment and I found myself wanting to scroll on my phone because I was so bored. The song is tedious, and it was particularly egregious how Emma screamed, “and that’s why they need us!” because she can’t belt it. The more intimate moments in the movie were sung live (goddamn it Tom Hooper), and man… Emma didn’t need to be hung out to dry like that. This performance wouldn’t make it past auditions in American Idol.
Eddie Redmayne was also not a professionally trained singer before he made Les Mis. You stack him up against a talent like Michael Ball and he’s not going to measure up, but he made me feel something during “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables”. Ella Hunt has more subtle moments of emotion in “I Will Believe” than Eddie does and it still kills me. Just the simple act of closing her eyes to feel the snow on her face in a hopeless moment is enough to get me choked up. Every time Emma makes her eyes wide and cries in this I think of Annie Edison in Community.
Damien Chazelle did not want to hire musical theater veterans because he feared the audience wouldn’t believe it when they randomly started singing, but like… We watched these two fly in an observatory for 4 minutes. There’s a 30 second mannequin challenge during “Someone in the Crowd” while Mia slowly walks around the party. Not to mention the extreme realism of everyone leaving their cars and wandering down what I can only assume is supposed to be the 405 during a traffic jam. Why are you worried about a great vocal performance alienating the audience?! But apparently this tactic has worked successfully on non-musical movie-goers and Emma Stone won an Oscar, so honestly and sincerely, what the fuck do I know?
Winter, 5 years later…
Mia is now a famous actress picking up coffee from the Warner Brothers lot. If that wasn’t a surprise enough, she has a daughter and is MARRIED TO TOM EVERETT SCOTT. Fuckin’ SHADES from That Thing You Do! His cameo was the most exciting thing in the whole movie.
Mama Mia and Tom Everett Scott leave their baby at home to go on a date, and when they run into traffic they divert their plans to visit a random jazz club off the highway exit. Turns out it’s Seb’s club and upon seeing Mia he takes the mood down several notches by playing their love melody on the piano. This causes Mia to dream ballet à la An American in Paris an alternate scenario where Sebastian spent his time supporting Mia’s career instead of his own, and honestly kudos, more films need to end in abstract 20 minute dance pieces.
Seb doesn’t snub Mia at the restaurant, doesn’t take the job with Keith, and is physically there to cheer in a crowded audience as Mia’s play is a resounding success. They go to Paris to film her movie, get married, and have a kid, concluding the fantasy by going on the same date to Seb’s jazz club, but it’s owned by someone else. It’s kinda messed up to be fantasizing about your ex replacing your current husband, eh? Especially Tom Everett Scott. The absolute disrespect.
For all the comparisons of La La Land to Umbrellas of Cherbourg, I think the similarities are purely superficial. The framing of the story, the use of color, the Rochefort stroll through the WB lot, the repeating love theme, Guy’s auto shop in the backdrop of the dream ballet, the fact Mia’s character in the play is named Geneviève… There’s a lot of clues here that Damien Chazelle and the composer, Justin Hurwitz, love Jacques Demy, but I don’t believe the thesis of this film has anything to do with romantic love. When Mia tells Seb she’ll always love him while they were breaking up I was sort of taken aback since I don’t think either of them said it before this moment, nevertheless declared it over and over like Geneviève and Guy did. The only thing Mia loved about Seb was his constant cheerleading of her talent, and that fact was only confirmed later in the dream ballet.
Instead, La La Land’s main message is the self-satisfaction of pursuing true art at the cost of everything. Mia becomes a famous actress but has to leave Seb behind because he has other ambitions. Seb insists he has to open his jazz club in the same building as a famous previous jazz club with an inside-baseball sort of name. He wants to play “pure” jazz like the greats before him. He’s replicating previous musical styles by literally replaying them over and over, constantly references famous musicians, and lauds artifacts of the past while preventing people in the present from altering them. He eventually compromises and opens his club in another location under his own name. This is what La La Land does; it DJ re-re-re-REmixes references to movies and, in some cases, sloppily recreates them. For Keith’s assertion that art needs to evolve otherwise the form will die… I’m not entirely convinced, but I’m also not blind to the fact I’m clearly in the minority.
I’m just tired of directors prioritizing the acting in a movie musical, as if acting is more important because of the medium. Both Ryan and Emma are terrific actors in this, and the most captivating parts of La La Land were the scenes where they were playfully quipping, or fighting, or pushing each other to aim higher with their goals. The director crafted these beautiful scenes for them to dance in and I was so distracted by the execution of the performers that I got completely divested in what was going on.
While I was researching the rehearsal process for this movie (specifically curious if a vocal coach was involved) I ran into a comment of someone frustrated with people bitching about how the movie should have cast big name musical stars like Gene Kelly or Judy Garland when that would have been impossible because this generation has no triple threats. I found this argument incredibly short sighted because there’s a WHOLE FUCKING INDUSTRY filled with triples threats – these “mythical creatures” work in musical theater. The Hollywood Industrial Complex doesn’t churn out 10 Fred and Ginger-esque movies a year because there is a talent drought – the thousands of qualified people that could rise to their level of fame aren’t given the chance because Hollywood isn’t convinced people want to see musicals. …Sometimes I think Broadway doesn’t think people want to see musicals either because how else are you going to justify Hugh Jackman’s casting in The Music Man or the 7000 translations of popular movies into stage musicals (and then sometimes back to movie musicals). But that’s a whole other tangent.
In the last few months look at how they marketed Mean Girls, Wonka, and The Color Purple. Those movies are making money by tricking people into watching a musical because the general public thinks musical numbers are only appropriate for children’s cartoons or performed on stage in a biopic. Hollywood’s previous solution to this problem was to cast big name actors and train the shit out of them to perform and since it worked for Moulin Rogue and Chicago we’ve been burdened with James Corden ever since. (Actually, we might be able to blame Evita for this since Madonna won a Golden Globe, but I won’t let myself because she made her money singing first and that movie is a mess.) When Star Power stopped working they started with the bait and switch, and they’re going to continue with it because it’s working. I wish In the Heights performed better, but that one I think suffered because of Lin-Manuel Miranda overexposure.
You’re probably thinking if it gets people to see a musical, so what if the musical numbers aren’t great? It may be their gateway drug into the genre! And I hear and acknowledge that you’re right. If La La Land can encourage fans to watch Umbrellas of Cherbourg or a Gene Kelly movie it’s a net positive. I know it encouraged me to purchase Anna and the Apocalypse on Blu-ray. But I also posit that the classic musical movies are really fucking good and I don’t know why we have to keep dumbing down the genre to make it more appealing when a good product should speak for itself. I mean, I know why, it’s money, but harrumph to that. We all grew up loving Julie Andrews! WE COULD HAVE MORE PEOPLE LIKE JULIE ANDREWS IF WE STOPPED BEING EMBARRASSED BY THIS FUCKING GENRE.
This is the Kirkland Signature-brand musical. It’s the musical movie we have at home catered to people who do not like musicals. Clearly there is an audience for that, but man, watching La La Land made me feel like Seb listening to jazz get watered down until it becomes unrecognizable. This, right here, is my “old man yells at cloud” moment.