La La Land (2016) : Brief Review -

A fine tale of Shattered and Achieved Dreams but shows us how much do we owe and miss Classic Musicals of Old Hollywood. In the first intentional meeting of hero-heroine in La La Land the heroine gives a reference of Iconic film Casablanca (1942) and the very next moment i knew in my mind somewhere that this film is going to have a similar climax like Casablanca where the Hero will have no girl in his life and has to leave Heroine who have another guy in her life. As expected it had the exact same thing but just the theme wasn't so iconic or timeless like Casablanca and the impact of course wasn't upto Casablanca (i believe no film will ever match Casablanca level). La La Land has positives to admire but it also has some issues to deal with. The biggest problem of the film is, it is known as a Musical but doesn't have enough Musicals to be called a Musical. Second biggest fault is both the leading artists Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are below average singers and dancers hence all the Musical scenes look lukewarm. It proves again that how much do we owe to Classic Musicals from Old Hollywood by Gene Kelly. If you remember Singin' In the Rain, An American In Paris then certainly you are not among those audience who call this Mediocre La La Land a Great Musical. I am out of the list. La La Land fails as a musical and it was acceptable because of the modern techniques of filmmaking but it also failed to keep the narrative well versed. I don't understand why that 5-6 minutes dramatic dreamy segment in the climax when the decision was made mutually by hero-heroine both. If it was mutual then of course there was no need to stretch thier shattered dreams through average visual portion. It wasn't the first time when we see Hero-heroine not ending up together because of their careers then why the hell make it look so international and effortless? It was a simple idea and definitely acceptable and impactful too but just because of stretched and mild storytelling it has to lose points from its overall impact. And talking about the opposite side of it, the hero and heroine both confess that they will love each other forever then why there was not a single scene which shows the seriousness of their relationship? Despite regular 2 hours runtime i had to see the runtime bar several times that shows how much the film dragged whereas i remember watching 3 hours long musicals without checking the runtime bar once. Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling both give honest performance and thier dedication in the scenes can be seen with their efforts. Screenplay has many haults for no reason and so editing had to be more tight but both the things couldn't collaborate nicely to make it a solid team effort. Director Damien Chazelle has made a good film overall but not subtle and detailed. He missed many nuances and made many small small blur mistakes which technically pulls La La Land much down to make it stand much lower than Old Musicals made almost 5-6 decades ago. Overall, La La Land is a fine tale of dreams and it works on both the sides of coin shattered and achived but as a cinematic musical experience the final impact stays on "Decent" Level which is far lower than what some people have made it look i mean "Great". Somebody here in IMDB users reviews said, "Shame on Hollywood for endorsing this mediocre film as Great Musical", i agree slightly and anyways i don't care much about Oscars.

RATING - 6/10*

By - #samthebestest