La La Land

Saw La La Land, the film that nearly won the Oscars.  It was a nice little musical about following dreams.  It was apparently inspired by The Young Girls of Rochefort and other films of Jacques Demy, films which I saw and hated in high school.  The things I hated about them then are present here in La La Land: the frivolity, the cutesy musical numbers and bright, mono-colored costumes, but here they're muted.  With this film, the frivolity is undercut with the eternal, horrible, herculean struggle to make it in showbiz and I liked that.  The movie admits that following your dreams also sort of sucks.

I really liked that there's actually a few scenes where the characters throw in the towel.  They fight with each other and one of them gives up the game entirely, saying their sick of making a fool of themselves.  The sad reality is that for every person who makes it in Hollywood, in sports, on Broadway, there are hundreds more that had to sadly move back home.  It's a surprising, self-aware moment to find in a musical.  There are other, more spoiler-y surprises as well near the end.  I enjoyed the moments when the music stopped and the real world was gently let in.

So I enjoyed this movie.  It still feels a little light, a little vapid, but there's a  good soul underneath it, and it's ultimately pretty inspiring and surprising.  I dunno Oscar-worthy, but it's definitely good, wholesome fun.