LA LA LAND (B-minus) - "La La Land" is a perfect title for this movie, because that's where its filmmakers and stars come from. It's an alternate universe where budding starlets (working as baristas, naturally) and humorless white jazz purists somehow represent the American dream.
It is a place where a young director is given the keys to LA, where he can indulge all of his puerile retro fantasies, using the city's landmarks and people of color as props. It is an alt-reality where life bursts with colors; jerks and creeps are irresistible to the opposite sex; people fly through the air when they dance; and casting directors are arrogant pricks unless played by smiling, sensitive women of color. It's a world where John Legend is the hack and the sellout and Ryan Gosling is the tortured traditionalist.
Call it escapist entertainment. Call it delusion. Whatever, the feel-good movie of the Hollywood season makes for a fine kickoff to the Trump years, when both escapism and delusion are high on the list of default settings for anyone left of Reich.
This is a story about that plucky young actress, Mia, played by the expressive Emma Stone, who keeps running into the starving-artist jazz pianist, smug Sebastian (square-jawed Ryan Gosling), until they give in to fate and start dating, serving as support for each other's hopes and dreams. Didn't David Lynch drive a stake through these fantasy pictures with "Mullholand Drive" a generation ago? Have we come back out the other end, desperate to plunge into a virtual reality, flailing for that time when America was great, when Debbie Reynolds (RIP) was singin' in the rain?
Ah, but they don't make 'em like that anymore. Maybe it's not possible to make America great again. Get a refund on that red hat. It struck me while watching this fairly entertaining movie that maybe the reason they don't make musicals anymore is because there aren't enough actors out there who can act and sing and dance well enough to cast a production. (Or was the Greatest Generation just more easily entertained and forgiving back in the good old days?)
Gosling in particular seems lost out on the big soundstage. He gets tossed into the deep end here, and he barely keeps his head above water. He can't sing, fine. He took dance lessons, we can see that. He's always been an OK actor, if you can get past his pasted-on smirk. (We liked him in the silly "The Nice Guys" earlier this year.) He's pretty and he knows it, but he can't rise above that like Brad Pitt can.
Stone acts, if not dances, rings around her partner. (Gosling was similarly TKO'd up against Michelle Williams in "Blue Valentine.") Stone manages to wring genuine emotion from this plastic production, without much to bounce off. Those big eyes of hers well up like ponds when Mia tells Sebastian that "maybe I'm not" good enough to make it in the business, and our eyes puddle too. She's the only person worth plunking down 10 bucks for. (Fine supporting players like J.K. Simmons and Rosemarie DeWitt are wasted in throwaway roles.)
And then there is the writer-director, Damien Chazelle, the wunderkind behind 2014's darling "Whiplash," another wank about his beloved jazz scene. He is starting to come across as a junior version of Clint Eastwood, who also likes to fetishize and worship at the altar of Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. Chazelle, like Eastwood, also has the arrogance of a perfectionist and studio head's pet. They each wield the camera like it's a woman to be made love to, and they make it slither around a set like a smarmy lothario. They are technically proficient, but these jazz aficionados, ironically, lack soul.
What Chazelle creates here is an overly mannered and fussed-over Hollywood spectacle that treats magical realism like a mere camera trick. That said, there are times when it's fun to watch this all pop on the big screen. (It would be sad to watch it on an iPad.) It is bursting with colors, and it smolders with spotlights and shadows. The crane shots (another Eastwood backseat maneuver) make your head reel in delight. An extra violently pikes into an outdoor swimming pool with a splash and panache. An occasional one-liner breaks through for a laugh, even a few of Sebastian's lunkhead lines. A take on '80s synth bands and their poofy outfits and hair hits the mark with snark.
And the ending, finally, lives up to the billing. It's an astonishing "what if" tour de force, whirlwind storytelling at its best. The movie is like an NBA game that way; if you can sit through the first two hours of routine flash and slash, then you can revel in the thrilling final shots. It's the illusion of a full evening of entertainment, a clever Tweet, a short-cut to a sense of satisfaction. It's how we live now, and this exercise suggests that we can't recapture more innocent days.
Forget it, Jake. It's La La Land.
BONUS TRACK
This was our annual Christmas Day Mainstream Movie outing. Here is an updated list from best to worst.
1. Up in the Air (2009)
2. Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004)
3. Dreamgirls (2006)
4. Charlie Wilson's War (2007)
5. The Fighter (2010)
6. American Hustle (2013)
7. La La Land (2016)
8. The Wrestler (2008)
9. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
10. Young Adult (2011)
11. This Is 40 (2012)
12. Into the Woods (2014)
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