An Anachronistic Nightmare
This film is an anachronistic fucking nightmare, best illustrated in its combination of having the protagonist driving an Oldsmobile with an 8-track tape player and the other a Prius. Oh, but Ryan Gosling’s character has *classic* style, just look at his pretentious wing-tip shoes.
In all honesty, at least he can act, which is more than I can say for Emma “Play To The Camera” Stone. She plays/is a hammy, dilettante hipster – the kind of insufferable theatre-folk who hang around community venues lamenting that we no longer live in the goddamned 1950s.
Grow the fuck up! As a whiny, tyro actress, she doesn’t seem to understand how filmmaking works – despite working as a barista on a production lot. (Psst, when you’re walking by set and an AD tells you they’re rolling, you fucking shut the fuck up!)
While watching Singin’ in the—, I mean La La Land, I couldn’t help notice that no one could dance – despite having a choreographer work through the numerous routines. Dance should be free and fun, expressive and physical; walking with a little gyrating hardly counts, turds. And despite Gosling being the ONLY redeeming quality in this film, the motherfucker can’t sing OR dance. Take your goddamned hands out of your pockets when you move, wang.
Who do you think you are, Gene Kelly? You forget, he’s actually good. I get that having a “oner” looks cool, but the camerawork was as maladroit as the clunky performers. Seriously, they move like crap! And a voice coach for everyone involved would’ve paid HUGE dividends. Stone’s singing was laughably poor, and I’m as fit to judge a singer’s performance as William Hung.
A quick word about the cinematography: it was largely UGLY. A friend asked me to review this film before they view it, and I think this alone is reason enough to abandon the attempt. I can count the number of interesting shots on one hand, which – coincidentally – is the same number of well-delivered lines in this picture (done solely by Gosling).
I know the DP has an ASC accreditation, but it warrants me giving this tip to him: don’t light an actor’s face with a full green key. They look fucking DEAD and putrid, like Emma Stone is a rotting corpse approaching her boyfriend for dinner. It isn’t clear if they just live adjacent to a 24-hour laundromat or if she’s been zombified and is after his brains.
Despite An American in P—, ahem, La La Land’s attempt to blend songs into the scenes, they do so terribly – awkwardly fading to silence as the mediocre, pre-recorded music track fills in as diegetic.
I mean it when I say that the references weren’t cute; they were borderline shit attempts to use features that made those movies great as a means to improve the garbage you’ve laid out. This movie was like Singin’ in the Rain, only if by “like” we mean imagined by a complete fucking moron.
During one scene in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg— dammit…La La Land, they show a very brief clip from Rebel Without A Cause, which both those twats don’t even finish because the Rialto’s projectionist DOESN’T DERSERVE TO FUCKING LIVE! Who the hell BURNS the fucking film!?! You stupid shitstain…this isn’t Cinema Paradiso for God’s sake!!! Your fucking theatre deserved to be shut down.
Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that, even though it was a brief shot, I found myself instantly wishing I were in THAT screening…or that this pile of maggot piss lit on fire. I don’t often wish for a movie to be over so early in the story.
This movie lacks style, completely. I know I’ve been making jokes about the thieving they did to pander to people that don’t even understand why they like musicals (and they FUCKING SHOULD BECAUSE THEY CAN BE AWESOME).
But the film is such a Frankenstein’d piece of shit that it actually has to include a scene where two of the actors discuss the evolution of jazz (and making it more accessible to younger audiences) as a metaphor for why this movie simply…doesn’t…work…. Hey bruh, let me finish your analogy: you say jazz is dying, perhaps. You know what else is dying? Original movie concepts…and you fuckers are operating the guillotine.
In the end, I’m not sure what this film was intended to be. It was unfunny, uncreative, musically inept, artistically bankrupt, visually bland (with terrible VFX in some places), and ultimately paced so poorly that it crawls to its own, slow, drawn-out death. Pass on this monstrosity. I’d rather chow through a fish-oil flavoured vat of Vaseline than sit through it again.