La La Land: Film Review

​By Sophie

Are you a fan of musicals? Do you want to be taken on a beautiful journey in Hollywood? Then this film is for you.

This is a story about an aspiring actress and a pianist who want to make it big in the sunny state of California. By day, Mia (Emma Stone) works in a coffee shop in the Hollywood studios; and as soon as her shift ends, she auditions for various roles in tv shows and movies but doesn’t have any success. Sebastian Wilder (Ryan Gosling) has little jobs here and there - he plays in restaurants and at parties but isn’t satisfied because he’s passionate about jazz and doesn’t want it to die.

The film was beautifully filmed, the songs were catchy and made me want to buy a 60s summer dress and dance.

I was a bit reluctant to watch that movie as I’m not a big fan of ‘Hollywood movies’ with notorious actors – I prefer independent movies. However, I’m so glad that I gave this movie a shot because I don’t regret it and have watched it a couple of times already.

The most interesting thing in the movie is the somewhat realism of the plot. Usually, in Hollywood movies, you would be able to predict the ending and everything always seems so bright and colorful – this was not the case here.

This movie showed the struggles of aspiring actors and musicians, the ugly side of wanting to follow our dreams. The message was very empowering: even though the journey to your desired career will be long, you’ll fall many times, you’ll want to give up because it’s draining your energy and you might even doubt whether this is actually for you; please get up, continue to work hard because it will all be worth it. It’s important that your environment supports you, like Sebastian had Mia and vice-versa. If you don’t have people in your surroundings that are willing to encourage you, then I’ll encourage you because I know how nice and strong you can feel when people are behind you and are pushing you to do your best.

Overall, I would give La La Land an 8.5/10. The only negative point would be that I would have liked to hear Emma Stone sing more.