Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		5.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

La La Land Blu-ray Movie Review

Ho hum or whoa! hum?

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman April 18, 2017

It's really exciting to be able to review the winner of this year's Academy Award for Best Picture. What's that? Oh, that's right — I reviewed Moonlight several weeks ago. Okay, now that we have that silly joke and/or cultural reference out of the way. . .

You either like (and/or love) musicals, or you don’t. My hunch is not that many folks would argue with that premise, which seems to be true of many, maybe even most, moviegoers, since there really doesn’t seem to be that much of a “middle ground” in terms of responses to this particular genre. I, for one, am an unabashed lover of musicals, and count several of them as among my all time favorite films. The film musical’s popularity has ebbed and flowed pretty dramatically over the years, something I mentioned in terms of one of its more unexpected ebbs in my recent How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying Blu-ray review. Several more ebbs followed the rather surprising one that occurred for at least a year or two in the wake of the incredibly successful The Sound of Music, with periodic flows which included a brief burst in the early seventies which saw the rise of Fiddler on the Roof and Cabaret, and again decades later with the release of Chicago.

The years since Chicago could probably be described as kind of a mixed bag in terms of artistic quality and box office appeal, with some films like The Phantom of the Opera getting pilloried by the critics and failing to really catch fire at the box office, while others like Les Misérables faring at least somewhat better with critics and a good deal better with the ticket buying populace. All of the aforementioned films had at least one thing in common, though, namely that they were all based on pre-existing (and quite successful) stage versions. Musicals written expressly for film have had an at least somewhat similar history, with some grabbing the brass ring and others—well, missing it.

“Lesser” musicals with no stage antecedents were fairly common in the 1950s especially, but started to be less prevalent in the 1960s, though interestingly in 1968, the one relatively immediate post-Sound of Music year that boasted a significant stage to film adaptation hit of immense proportions (Oliver!), the original musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang failed to live up to the records set by the previous original film musical with a song score by the venerable Sherman Brothers*, Mary Poppins, still one of the most popular and most beloved musicals of all time, whether culled from a stage version or not. Also kind of interestingly, many of the most popular original movie musicals of the past several decades have also come from Disney, albeit in animated form ( Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid 3D, et al.). (It’s almost ironic that Disney is now recycling its animated musical fare as both stage shows and even live action films, as in the case of the “new” Beauty and the Beast.)

Which brings us, finally, to La La Land, a film which has been lionized for both reinvigorating the musical (again) as well as being at least occasionally pilloried for being an ersatz version of film musicals of yore, whether those be the vaunted efforts of the Freed Unit at Metro Goldwyn Mayer or (at least for this particular reviewer) the candy colored, through sung world of Jacques Demy classics like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort (both available in the highly recommended box set The Essential Jacques Demy). Which side of this debate you come down on will probably hinge largely on your own history with film musicals, and it’s probably essential to point out that some (including this particular reviewer) may actually partake of both sides of this divide, enjoying some of the technical aspects of La La Land while perhaps being less fulsomely satisfied with some other elements, including the actual songs.

First and most importantly, props must be given to Damien Chazelle for having had the fortitude to even get a patently whimsical musical like La La Land made, and if there’s one thing this film gets right, it’s the overall tone, along with some really wonderfully inventive stagings that offer great visual presentations of several songs. Chazelle’s writing is also very smart and often quite funny, quickly establishing the characters of jazz (?) pianist Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and actress Mia (Emma Stone). The two keep meeting cute, in time honored film (not just musical film) fashion, until of course a romance blossoms. The film charts a fairly realistic emotional course within its dialogue scenes while indulging in pure fantasy for several of the song sequences. Sidebars include Mia’s girlfriends as well as a faltering relationship with a boyfriend named Greg (Finn Wittrock), while on the Sebastian side of the aisle there are detours on his quest to “rescue” jazz from attrition when he joins a more pop fusion band fronted by his friend Keith (John Legend). It’s all paper thin, but it’s to Chazelle’s credit as well as to the performing chops of an ace cast that so much of this content lands so well.

But a musical has to be (or at least should be) built around great songs, and it’s here that for me personally La La Land simply didn’t fulfill my particular needs for whatever reason. Again, props must be paid to composer Justin Hurwitz for delivering some really sumptuous orchestrations (and props to him for orchestrating, a job that is regularly farmed out to “experts”). But the tunes are kind of meh and the lyrics are hardly in Sondheim (or frankly even Sherman Brothers) territory, with lines like:

I’m reaching for the heights
And chasing all the lights that shine.

Ironically enough, one of the tunes that resonated the most strongly with me was the supposed “awful” fusion number “Start a Fire”. It’s obvious (to me, anyway) that Hurwitz is trying to (in at least some of his material) evoke some of the wistful feeling of Michel Legrand’s music for the Demy films mentioned above, but for me his efforts simply don’t have Legrand’s sparkle or motivic intelligence. I also found it a little hard to reconcile Sebastian’s supposed jazz proclivities with the Tchaikovsky-esque love theme he keeps noodling on the piano. All of this said, as a longtime lounge pianist myself, I have to say Sebastian’s interchanges with a frustrated club owner (J.K. Simmons, who won an Oscar for Chazelle’s takedown of jazz instructors, Whiplash) struck me as all too realistic. (For those interested, it's also kind of interesting to contrast Mia's big emotional song "Audition (The Fools Who Dream)" with another song by another composer built around an actress' trials to land a job while a relationship is falling apart, "Climbing Uphill" from The Last Five Years.)

La La Land’s retro qualities don’t just apply to the genre or even the score, and begin with a winking nod to the CinemaScope era (see screenshot 19—though wasn’t it Cinerama that featured the curtain opening to “widen” Academy ratio to something more vast?). The film has the polish and glamor of some of the best MGM musicals of the 1950s, and in fact the closing musical montage seems like a direct homage to ballets that were so prominent in films like An American in Paris. One of the smartest things Chazelle does from his director's perch is another homage to the great musical directors of yore: he lets you see the dancers dance, often in long, unedited takes (a distinct difference from the last person who "reinvented" the musical, Rob Marshall, who preferred lots of quick cuts during the dance sequences in Chicago and even in Nine).

*The Sherman Brothers were at the vanguard of original screen musicals for at least a little while after their heyday during the Mary Poppins era. Aside from Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks , they also wrote original scores for Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella, among others, during an era when the musical, let alone the original film musical, was in a state of decline.

La La Land Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

La La Land is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in the good old CinemaScope ratio of 2.55:1. Chazelle continues his retro tendencies by shooting on film, and with director of photography Linus Sandgren delivers a really gorgeous looking film which looks fantastic in high definition. This is a film full of the kind of bright colors and patently artificial lighting that were part and parcel of both the Freed unit and the Demy films, and this transfer preserves a really appealingly varied palette beautifully. The film tends to ping pong between naturally lit and/or graded material (as in the opening freeway number) and more "artistic" choices, as in some of the nighttime material or the big planetarium sequence. Detail levels are routinely high, especially in brighter lighting, as should be expected. While the nighttime and club scenes don't have quite the same detail levels, there's surprisingly good shadow detail and definition throughout these sequences as well. The transfer looks appealingly organic and encounters no compression issues.

La La Land Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

La La Land's Dolby Atmos (Dolby TrueHD 7.1 core) mix is a wonder to behold from before the imagery ever starts, with a cacophonous array of traffic noise and radio "dials" being jiggered with, all of which leads to a beautifully immersive listening experience, with effects clearly emerging from various channels and (in the Atmos mix) even overhead. The song sequences all feature great surround activity and (again) Hurwitz's really effective orchestrations sound clear and forceful throughout (I especially loved some of the gossamer vibraphone and glockenspiel elements). Crowd scenes, including clubs, parties and even the backlot of a movie studio, also provide great opportunities for discrete channelization. Dialogue is also rendered cleanly on this problem free and very enjoyable track.

La La Land Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary with Writer/Director Damien Chazelle and Composer Justin Hurwitz


• Featurettes (1080p; 1:19:58) is an engaging series of pieces on a number of subjects including the staging of some of the film's big musical set pieces and Ryan Gosling's attempts to learn to play piano.


• Damien and Justin Sing: The Demos

  What a Waste of a Lovely Night (1080p; 1:55)

  City of Stars (1080p; 3:13)

• Marketing Gallery

  Theatrical Trailer 1 (1080p; 1:35)

  Theatrical Trailer 2 (1080p; 1:33)

  Theatrical Trailer 3 (1080p; 2:14)

  Poster Gallery (1080p)

• Song Selection allows quick access to the film's tunes, and also offers a Play All option (48:52).

La La Land Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's been kind of interesting seeing reactions to La La Land since it came out. I have some friends who think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, and others who think it's a decidedly overrated piece of triviality. I actually like and admire large swaths of the film. It's bright and breezy, the staging and choreography of the songs are both very effective , and the performances are all extremely enjoyable as well (though for my money Gosling and Stone are better dancers than singers). For me personally, I just wish the songs had been more emotionally resonant. This Blu-ray presentation offers superior technical merits and an enjoyable supplementary package. Highly recommended.