La La Land

Type: Movie

Score: 10/10

Date modified: Dec 9, 2025

Embarrassingly enough I really enjoyed La La Land which I certainly didn't expect after spending most of my life actively avoiding watching musicals. Ryan Gosling playing Sebastian and Emma Stone playing Mia may have gone a little too hard, Gosling especially was unexpectedly way better than I assumed he'd be in a musical. Apparently he even learnt how to play the piano with this which if true is pretty impressive and paid off imo as the scene of Sebastian putting his heart into his piece only for nobody to care except for Mia who knows exactly how he's feeling was easily one of the best of this film. This kind of feeds into how I found it very cool how the film is a constant mix between idealism (the musical segments) and realism (the non-musical segments) and the switch between the two is never all that jarring. Just to talk about the scene of Sebastian playing the piano again, the way the spotlight hit him as the played and got engrossed in his music felt very natural which is why it was all the more soul crushing when he steps up to find nobody actually gave a damn about what he just did. Like I deadass expected everyone to stand up and start clapping or something and I'm fairly sure many others did and that was completely subverted. In the end this idea of idealism vs realism climaxes, the pair's dreams get in the way of their relationship and instead of everything working out they have to choose one and give up on the other. Like that's just not something I see often and there aren't many films that can do an ending scene like La La Land's.

At first I was a little worried I wouldn't be able to take a film where the characters spontaneously broke into dance seriously however while that was partially the case I also think the fact that this film isn't some mega serious world changing story (obviously it is for the characters involved but I'm sure you hopefully get what I'm saying) helped with that so all instead of taking me out the musical numbers really just helped set the mood, even better than many traditional means movies may take because it's so in your face about how it wants you to feel. On top of that, I think the musical numbers served as a good way to have a visual and auditory way to see how the characters are thinking more than just expressions and words which was pretty cool. Can't say I wasn't a little disappointed that they used their best song for their first song but at least I was hooked instantly and it's not like the rest of the songs were duds, the majority of soundtrack was pretty packed with good songs, a look at their Spotify numbers would tell show that much. I also have to assume the amount out of their 30m budget they needed to blow renting out a busy road to film on was pretty significant so it'd be even worse if the song they had during that scene ruined it. I'd love to also know how people driving past this were thinking when they saw this insane shit going on during their daily commute. I also just gotta say, I'm not sure if I'm onto it but "Another Day Of Sun" was foreshadowing what would happen right?? Like the first girl left her boyfriend to be a star or whatever??

I also really like the way this film is shot, not exactly an interesting opinion based on how this film was received online but it seems very few of my opinions are and this is my site so you're not allowed to stop me. Obviously the pretty iconic by this point scene of the male and female lead dancing over Los Angeles (I think) is where most people's minds go and it's no surprise, they used that scene for their excellent cover for a reason, but it felt like most scenes were brightly lit and everyone was wearing bright colours. Compared with many of the very grey films I usually these days (though by the looks of it the tide has been changing on that front in the recent years) watching La La Land was a lot more of a visually stimulating experience. This choice probably was to do with how theatrical this whole film is, maybe that's common for musicals but as I mentioned I'm not super into musicals so I wouldn't know.

I didn't really know where to fit this stuff in so here are some pretty disjointed thoughts; my favourite part of this film however was how everyone was smiling in the dancing sections. Again I don't have the data to know whether that's just a musical thing but I like to imagine they were just having a good time. When Stone had a smirk during her and Gosling's dance in "A Lovely Night" I couldn't help crack up a little. The longer I write this for the more I realise I've just watched way too many action films and need to get out of my comfort zone a little more often but whatever can't stop won't stop. I didn't know J.K Simmons could smile so it was nice to see that near the end.

Edit: 8.5 -> 10, yeah sorry I locked the fuck in a little. I've watched this film about four extra times since writing this and almost obsessively listened to the soundtrack too. Apparently the soundtrack is currently my 70th most listened to album and Another Day of Sun is my 7th most listened to song and they're both only rising. Every time I rewatch I feel like I notice some subtly in the acting I hadn't before or notice some smart line, it's fantastic. My only complaint is that you can't hear the sound of their shoes tapping in A Lovely Night on Spotify.

Edit 2: The OST is now my 44th most listened to album.