You don't need a great voice to carry a musical. But you need to have an interesting voice. A lot of the old time musicals pretty much had the likes of Gene Kelly, and others have songs tailored to their limited range as singers. Even the silly Mamma Mia which suffered from cringeworthy screenplay and Pierce Brosnan's earnest donkey braying benefited from the rich catalog of songs and performers immersing themselves into the songs no matter how bad they sounded. Rocky Horror Picture Show made better use of the voices of non singers like Sarandon and even though Rocky Horror was never considered Oscar worthy , it actually has much superior songs to more lauded movies like La La Land.

LaLaLand is just flat out lacking in even semi memorable songs with great melodies. And even the non musical sequences are drab and stilted in the beginning of the movie which kind of makes you impatient right off the bat. The first half hour, there is only one semi compelling scene where Emma Stone is auditioning for a role. So it puts you in a mood not to give this movie the patience it probably needs.

The first scene that grabs my attention is the pool scene with the 80s cover band by an overeager cheesy singer who entertained me more than the other singers in the movie. Then the movie descends into mediocrity again where Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone have a duet where the song does their voices and our ears no favor. Ryan Gosling's voice comes across as a bored half hearted rendition after someone just woke him up in this song. At that point, I just gave up on the movie and watched the rest of it as I did other stuff.

Emma Stone had a better mini musical with her funny SNL skit(Les Jeunes de Paris) set in a french coffee shop than what we saw here. Ryan and Emma are both good actors and just wasted in a sloppily directed effort. This movie somehow achieved what I thought was impossible - make Emma Stone seem boring when she was having fun dancing.

I don't understand the cinematography wow factor here.The imagery looks more akin to late 2000s HD cinematography with the lack of adequate vibrancy in the colors and contrast.