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The opening scene of "La La Land" shows L.A. commuters breaking out into a cheery song, dancing in a traffic jam on the 105 — and the power of this fresh and vibrant movie musical would make you join them if the soundtrack was playing on your car stereo.
Writer-director Damien Chazelle, showing that his intense jazz drama "Whiplash" was no fluke, creates an unabashedly heart-on-its-sleeve Hollywood romance, the kind where the guy and the gal express the highs and lows of their relationship through songs and dance moves.
The guy is Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), a jazz pianist who gets fired from his piano-bar gig because he's too much of a purist to stick to the Christmas carols. The gal is Mia (Emma Stone), an actor who works as a barista in the coffee shop on the Warner Bros. backlot when she's not enduring rejection at a thousand auditions.
They encounter each other in that traffic jam, which ends with her flipping him off. They meet again later at a Hollywood party where he's playing in a cover band, but their conversation turns into sniping. It's only after the party, when he helps her find her car in the Hollywood hills, that their story takes on the dimensions of a movie romance — as they perform a tap-dancing duet while singing about how the beautiful view is wasted on two people who aren't in love.
Soon, they go on a real date, to see "Rebel Without a Cause" — which leads to a visit to one of the locations in "Rebel," the Griffin Park Observatory. There, another song begins, with the pair dancing in midair within the planetarium dome.
As the story proceeds through the seasons and more dazzling L.A. locations, romance blooms — but career ambitions threaten to derail their love. Mia, frustrated at the lack of acting work, takes Sebastian's suggestion to write her own one-woman play. Sebastian dreams of opening a jazz club, but takes a gig playing keyboard in a pop band (fronted by John Legend, a subversive choice to personify selling out).
Chazelle and composer Justin Hurwitz create an array of musical numbers through which the romance is told. It's nicely symbolic of the relationship that Sebastian's solo tune — the melancholy "City of Stars" — evolves into a lovely duet, and by the end credits becomes Mia's song.
The musical numbers owe a lot to classic Hollywood set pieces: for example, the way Mia and her roommates flip their skirts like the women in "West Side Story," and the closing fantasy sequence that evokes the finale of "An American in Paris" and the "Broadway Melody" number from "Singin' in the Rain."
The songs themselves show another influence: the breathy '60s Euro-pop of "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" and other French musicals. This is most clear in Stone's show-stopper, "Audition (The Fools Who Dream)," a heartbreaking number that starts as a spoken monologue and crescendos to a full-throated toast: "Here's to the hearts that ache, here's to the mess they make." (Warning to community theater directors everywhere: This song, true to its title, may supplant "What I Did for Love" as a go-to audition piece.)
The songs aren't Ethel Merman-style belters, trying to reach the back rows from a Broadway stage, so Chazelle has smartly picked actors who can channel intimacy in their singing. Gosling's crooner style matches Sebastian's brooding character, but it's Stone's husky purr and gentle whisper that turn out to be especially suited for Hurwitz's and Chazelle's tender melodies and poignant lyrics.
"La La Land" is more than just a chance to bask in the warm nostalgia of Hollywood musicals. Chazelle captures a feeling reminiscent of the jazz Sebastian so admires: He takes what's familiar, tinkers with it, and creates something new and alive.
Twitter: @moviecricket —
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'La La Land'
An out-of-work jazzman and a struggling actress fall in love in this lively throwback to Hollywood's age of movie musicals.
Where • Theaters everywhere.
When • Opens Friday, Dec. 16.
Rating • PG-13 for some language.
Running time • 128 minutes.