It is rare to see musicals today; after all this movie was made in 2016 and not the 1950’s. But there is one thing music and musicals do to us: they cheer us up. I watched La La Land for the first time last Sunday.

The film’s backdrop is in LA, so maybe it is more appropriate to write the title as LA LA Land. I also checked the definition of “la la land”: “Los Angeles or Hollywood, especially with regard to the lifestyle and attitudes of those living there or associated with it.” I never knew that … I knew the gist of what the phrase means, as described by its second meaning: “a fanciful state or dreamworld.”

The movie opens with a traffic jam, which is a sure way to bring the worst out in people. But this is a musical, so folks end up breaking into dance and song. And there is a sense of a place where everything is magical and dreams come true. Of course no musical is complete without a girl meets boy storyline … we meet Mia and Sebastian. She is a struggling actress, and he is a musician who aspires to open a jazz club. Certainly his ambitions are more nostalgic since there are probably few people who aspire to be jazz artists these days. But it is that nostalgia for a romantic time of the musicals that is embodied here. And the chasing of your dreams. The ending (five years later in movie time) was interesting. Mia is a famous actress, married with a daughter. She stumbles into a Jazz club that Sebastian has opened (so he also got to his dream). And the two of them are left imagining how things may have gone if their relationship had worked out.

There is one interesting line from Sebastian that striked me as interesting, more describing our lives and a hopeful view of the human condition in general: “This is the dream, it’s conflict and it’s compromise but it’s exciting!”
It’s was great to see a musical film that is recently produced. And it is not a redo of a broadway show; there were original songs developed for it. The cinematography and choreography were amazing. For someone young like myself who hasn’t grown up watching musicals, it was a fun entertaining movie that cheered me up.