La La Land review
By Joel Humphries · Watched 08.16.26
★★★★½ 4.5 / 5
Spoiler-free review
Damien Chazelle turns two ambitious people in Los Angeles into a classic movie musical, a romance and a love letter to the city at once. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone have ridiculous chemistry, the songs and images carry the story rather than interrupt it, and the relationship gives all that beauty something deeper to express. This is ultimately about the people who help shape us while we are becoming ourselves, and why a relationship need not last forever to matter. Ten years later, its mixture of old-Hollywood craft and emotional clarity still works beautifully. My friends skipped the rerelease; their loss.
Full review — contains spoilers
Damien Chazelle takes two people trying to make something of themselves in Los Angeles and turns their relationship into a classic movie musical, a love story and basically a love letter to Los Angeles all at the same time.
The music is great. The visuals are great. The performances are great. I love everything about it.
There are movies where the musical numbers feel like interruptions from the movie, and then there are actual movie musicals where the music is the movie. This is the latter. Gosling and Stone are just ridiculously charming together, which of course we already knew from the other movies they had done together, but this is the movie that uses that chemistry best.
I think there's something about the ending and the larger relationship here that makes this more than just a pretty musical. It's about the people who become part of your life while you're becoming whoever you're going to be. Sometimes those relationships are permanent and sometimes they aren't, but that doesn't make them meaningless.
It's a love letter to human relationships just as much as it is a love letter to Los Angeles and old Hollywood musicals.
Obviously, this was a huge movie. It was a box-office success, an awards success and a major moment for both Gosling and Stone, although neither one particularly needed La La Land to prove they could act.
Ten years later, it still works. I saw Train to Busan and La La Land in the same week because AMC brought them both back for their 10th anniversaries. 2016 was apparently doing okay.
I managed to drag people with me to the rerelease of Train to Busan. I could not get them to La La Land. Their loss.