Caught this multiple Academy Award winner on a flight from Phoenix to Detroit.
My verdict: Big thumbs down.
Trite, predictable, pretentious and boring, another Hollywood celebration of itself. I've liked the stars, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, in other films, but here they prove they can't sing or dance and Stone, in particular, is miscast and quite bad.
The film makers borrowed liberally from two French films of the mid-60s, The Young Girls of Rochefort and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg but misplaced the charm of those movies, a charm tied to a specific time and place. Quite a misfire by the same writer and director who made Whiplash, a wonderful film.
The only time the movie comes alive is when the character played by Gosling joins a band led by John Legend and we see a concert scene which is 100% better than the mundane musical dreck we get in the rest of the film.
And the film looks great throughout, it's just the substance that is lacking.
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