Review of La La Land (2016) by Phildog — 25 Apr 2017

A terrible musical with horrific singing. I mean really, this musical makes GLEE sound good. I mean, dear god. Just Ugh. The main sins of this film include:

1. The obnoxious and distracting camera work. They try and look clever with all these contentious shots. The issue is that ruins the pacing of each scene since it leaves no room for properly edited cuts.

2. The music, the singing and sound mixing are all atrocious. "Another Day of Sun" is possibly one of the single worst opening numbers I've witnessed. And I say witnessed, not heard, because you can't hear a damn thing. The music sounds like what you'd hear in an elevator. Competent but boring. The singing is the same, but none of the few decent singers this movie has can harmonise properly. It's hard to notice that problem though, when you can't hear them over the damn music. 3. Yeah... The "white guy trying to save Jazz" is problematic as hell. It's like how in RENT all the white people are being gentrified out of their neighbourhood by a black guy... Like, are you freaking kidding me? It doesn't bother me that much, but it's an issue.

Look, if you like this. Hey, that's great and.. No, I can't do this. Like, if you enjoyed this, I genuinely feel sorry you haven't been exposed to better musicals. I mean go look up Hairspray's opening on youtube. That's a song about Baltimore, yet it sounds more inviting than LA. Or go watch "Singing in the Rain". Sit down and listen to some of the musical numbers from Wicked or Hamilton or The Book of Mormon. Hell, if you're rich enough go see them while you still can.

There is a world of far, far, faaaaaaaar superior musicals out there for you to enjoy. La La Land is an insult to them all.