La La Land (DVD) – Movie Review
Follow Genre: Comedy, Drama, Music
Director: Damien Chazelle
Distributor: Belga Home Video
Duration: 123 minutes

La La Land (DVD) – Movie Review

Site Score
9.0
Good: Strong story, filmography
Bad: Dubbed songs
User Score
9.7
(3 votes)
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Rating: 9.7/10 (3 votes cast)

Having won six Oscars, among many other prizes, La La Land is probably one of those films that everybody wants to see at one point, if only to see if it was worth the hype. We must admit we were quite curious ourselves thinking ‘we’ll believe it when we see it’. We were pleasantly surprised, we must say, and we’ll tell you why in a minute.

La La Land cover

Mia Dolan (Emma Stone) is an aspiring actress in Los Angeles, but currently works in a coffee shop in a movie lot to be able to pay the bills. She came to L.A. to chase her dream, and is not planning to give up any time soon. Her last audition went very poorly though, and thus her friends decide to take her out to party the disappointment away. Meanwhile, Sebastian Wilder (Ryan Gosling) tries to make a living for himself as a pianist in a restaurant. There, he only gets to play stupid, simple songs, but what he really wants is to open a jazz club and let people discover the beautiful sound of jazz music. Currently, Mia and Sebastian are both just trying to make ends meet.

Even though they’ve met each other before briefly, it takes quite some time before the two really start noticing each other. At a party, he’s in the band, while she’s one of the guests, and in the end, they leave the party together. From then on, Sebastian and Mia start to spend more and more time together, her showing him around the movie lot where she works, and him telling her about his passion for jazz. Eventually, they move in together, and all goes well. When Sebastian is offered a steady income as a pianist in a former classmate’s fusion group, things start to go well, at first glance. Mia’s career is still going nowhere though, and she’s afraid that Sebastian will throw away his dream of opening a jazz club of his own if he takes Keith’s (John Legend) offer. The first cracks appear in their relationship, and only time can tell what the future will bring.

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A Hollywood romance, complete with dance and music and old school decors, that’s how you could describe La La Land. Nonetheless, it’s much more than that. It’s a story about chasing your dream, while also chasing love, about building a future. At times, the film is quite funny and light, but there are equally as many darker scenes, where real life seems to kick back in, making the movie quite interesting to watch. While the film is definitely a musical, we didn’t get the feeling that the music and dancing really took over, they were implemented in the story quite well, which made sure that the story never really stopped when the music kicked in. The filmography made for some stunning moments during the film, the scene at the Griffith Observatory probably being the most enchanting.

Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling prove to be a very convincible onscreen couple once again. They both have their fair share of songs to perform, and while they certainly don’t sound perfect, they do have something fresh and innocent over them, which actually sounds quite nice. One minor remark is that, especially in the beginning, the songs are obviously dubbed, which took away from the otherwise fun melodies. This did get better further in the film though. Emma Stone was definitely capable of performing the far from easy role of Mia Dolan. Ryan Gosling was very convincible as well, not only in his acting and singing, but also his piano playing. He still has some hidden talents, it seems.

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On this DVD release, you’ll get about fifteen minutes worth of extras, apart from the audio commentaries of director Damien Chazelle and composer Justin Hurwitz. ‘La La Land’s love letter to Los Angeles’ will tell you a bit more about how L.A. is shown in the film, not only the city itself, but also the dreams that people who move there try to chase. Another bonus feature focuses more on Ryan and Emma as a couple in the film. Lastly, you can also enjoy a song selection.

Conclusion

You’ve probably heard it a million times before, but La La Land really is a film worth watching. Nodding to the old Hollywood movie musicals, La La Land shows a modern, yet universal story about love and ambition, and Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling prove that they have way more up their sleeve than just acting. Take it or leave it, we loved this film a lot.

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Rating: 9.7/10 (3 votes cast)
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La La Land (DVD) - Movie Review, 9.7 out of 10 based on 3 ratings

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