Considering the hyperbolic buzz that has surrounded Damien Chazelle’s latest movie musical, La La Land—including raking in high praise on the festival trail, a couple of major awards, along with whispers of potential Oscar wins to come—expectations are naturally sky high. And having now finally seen the film in question, I’ll admit that there is indeed a great deal to recommend it—not least the practically off-the-charts chemistry between the leads, the often whimsically-choreographed song-and-dance numbers and the overall nostalgia for old Hollywood, specifically the musical tradition, that it mines. But calling it a “landmark” film like many have seems a bit excessive, in my opinion; tributes to classic cinema and movie-making in general—the stuff of critics’ dreams, basically—abound in Hollywood, and La La Land is a lovely enough addition to that list, but it’s also not really anything revolutionary or all that impactful. It’s the sort of production that you’d be happy enough to watch for its two-hour-or-so running time, and maybe hum a tune or two for a day. But I can’t really vouch for its memorability beyond that.

We’re on a clogged Los Angeles freeway overpass, and in one of the cars is Mia (Emma Stone), an aspiring actress who has decided to make the best of the gridlock and practice some lines. Suddenly, traffic lurches forward, but when Mia takes a bit too long getting on, it earns her a right rebuke from Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), a musician, in the car behind her. He yells at her, she flips him off—admittedly not love at first sight. But soon, they’re running into each other left and right: for instance, at the bar where he works, serenading patrons with dinky Christmas tunes on the piano—a jazz obsessive, Sebastian wants to open his own club some day, but until then, is doomed to rely on gigs like this one that he pretty much hates to pay the rent; or at a pool party—the kind she doesn’t enjoy but forces herself to go to just to make contacts with industry folk, in the hopes of catching the big break that will finally allow her to quit her job at the coffee shop. 

Despite getting off to a rough start, the two are far too cute and have far too much in common for the laws of cinematic plotting to not bring them together—a flirtatious note soon enters their interactions, a moonlight walk leads to a date at the movies leads to a little ditty and twirl in the iconic Griffith Observatory, and before you know it, the two are in love. But Chazelle isn’t about to let them off the hook that easy, and will trace the course of their romance, as it goes from initial near-perfect compatibility—with each pushing the other to do better and chase their dreams—to a point where both, now recognizing that L.A. can be hard on dreamers, must learn to make compromises, an act that will put immense pressure on their relationship and threaten to pull them apart.

La La Land is proof, foremost, of the versatility of the musical—namely, the fact that it doesn’t necessarily have to be, as is frequently the case, staged on an epic scale, but is also suited to bringing out smaller, more personal emotional junctures. The film additionally seeks to emphasise the form’s timelessness, combining a modern-day story and cinematography with a core sensibility that still harkens back to age old musicals, to result in an earnest, yet perceptibly self-aware product that feels old and new all at once. The production design, awash in bright primary colours and a stagey retro vibe, serves to further emphasise this ambiguity: aside from some few markers of time such as phones and other technological bits and bobs that are used sparingly, La La Landcould be taking place in any decade from the 50s onwards for all we know. 

Timeless too is the score by Justin Hurwitz, with whom Chazelle has previously collaborated in his 2009 debut, the musical Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, and again,more recently, in 2014’s acclaimed Whiplash. He brings to the film a mix of musical styles, and it’s agreat relief that it isn’t bogged with too many songs, as sometimes happens. Among the standouts are the beautifully intimate City of Stars and Audition (The Fools Who Dream), as isMia and Sebastian’s piano theme, which reappears every now and then throughout the story, proffering a strong undercurrent of nostalgia, as well as a sense of continuity,to the proceedings.Speaking of continuity, Chazelle and his crew have made a number of smart visual choices to make the songs pop even more, incorporating elements of magical realism, and reveling in distinctive long takes during performances that make them feel all of a piece, weightier than they would’ve been in smaller cuts, and more of a showcase for the exertions of the performers. 

As for those performers, Gosling and Stone might not be the most polished of singers or surefooted of dancers, but it’s precisely that rawness that appeals—and, of course, that powerful alchemy between them that has been evident since their first outing together in Crazy, Stupid Love, followed by Gangster Squad, and now this. Needless to say, they are the heart of the film: they have the sort of natural, effortless compatibility that has no need of dialogue to be communicated, and this time, in performing the songs themselves, they’re also laid bare to us in a manner we haven’t gotten to see before in any of their previous avatars. 

Enjoyable though it is for the most part, La La Land is also ultimately too familiar in theme and plot to really affect. We’ve seen more than plenty screenplays about the eternal struggle between art and commerce, the choice between following one’s dreams and accepting the hard truths of reality, and the film really doesn’t have anything revelatory to say on the matter—if anything, it simplifies that struggle to a great degree, reducing its nuances to a few choice clichés, and opting for an easy, unconvincing resolution. Characters too are little more than ciphers; it is a testament to the actors playing the couple that we relate to them at all. Though the final act, a dazzling,fantastical ode to what could have been, gives La La Land a touch of gravity and emotional heft, it’s not enough to make up for what has come before it: a none-too-imaginative story of triumphing over adversity in Hollywood.