All the reasons ‘La La Land’ is la la laughably bad
Ten years on from its release, La La Land still sparks debate among viewers who loved the spectacle and those who found its charms thin. The Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone pairing, paired with Damien Chazelle’s direction, landed on every awards circuit list in early 2017. Yet the film also drew pointed criticism for how it handled its leads, its music, and its view of jazz history. Those arguments have not faded with time, even as the movie keeps turning up on retrospective rankings.
Uneven footing for Mia and Seb
Chazelle’s character development for Emma Stone’s character Mia left a lot to be desired. While she discusses with Seb (Gosling) her aunt, who introduced her to classic movies that inspired her to pursue her dreams in Los Angeles, aside from this the character doesn’t say a lot. As Vox put it, “the movie is so much more concerned with Sebastian’s career that even Mia’s final triumph of an audition feels like an afterthought.” So while Stone gives it her best, it’s still clear that Chazelle’s interest is invested in Gosling’s character so much more. “Chazelle is interested in Mia not as a character or as a person but as an ornament, a symbol of a kind of dream and a kind of succes,” wrote The New Yorker. Chazelle’s films have often been described as favoring the male characters over the female, and while Emma Stone’s character Mia might be on a more level playing field with Seb (Gosling) than Madeline is with guy in Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, she is still silenced at the end of the film to give way for Seb’s voice. “In Damien Chazelle’s movies, men have power and they get (almost) everything they want,” noted LARB. “Guy gets Madeline, Andrew gets greatness (and Fletcher), and Sebastian gets his club (if not Mia). And women? All they get to do is listen.” Later analyses continue to note Mia’s arc as secondary to Sebastian’s artistic journey.
No singing, no dancing
For a film that centered on singing and dancing, the two leads were a questionable choice. Stone and Gosling aren’t without their merits, but neither are accomplished singers and Stone definitely can’t dance (not well, anyway). In addition, the musical format isn’t used in the way it should be, as most of the story is told outside of the big picture numbers, which are instead peppered within the movie as a sort of additional side dish. “The film features two break-up scenes; the fact that neither of them takes the form of a ballad suggests the narrative was constructed around music, not by it,” wrote LARB. Singing occupies roughly 18% of the film’s runtime according to period analysis.
Clueless representation of jazz
While the central character Seb is obsessed with jazz, stuck playing piano in a restaurant where he dreams of opening his own jazz club and playing his own style of music, The New Yorker pointed out that when he does actually take matters into his own hands to play his number, it’s not actually jazz. “What he plays sounds nothing like free jazz — it’s a maudlin little waltz that he then turns bombastic, much closer to Eddy Duchin or Liberace than to Cecil Taylor or, for that matter, Art Tatum, who’d have had no trouble making great jazz from Christmas carols.” Many members of the jazz community took issue with the type of jazz Seb lauds – neo-bop – describing how the film is “clueless” about what was happening with the musical genre at that time. Vulture described how it’s unfortunate that while many sectors in the jazz world have finally ditched rigid definitions of what the genre should be, the conservative vision was pushed to global audiences by the film. “If Sebastian, and perhaps Chazelle, really want to save jazz, the solution is to let people freely choose what they enjoy about the music. La La Land shows that people will like jazz if it’s introduced to them without condescension.” Critiques of Seb’s neo-bop focus and limited portrayal of jazz evolution remain active in music scholarship.
The whiteness of La La Land
Many find trouble with a white man as the key figure looking to save jazz too, something which was outlined by musician & songwriter Rostam Batmanglij, who pondered, “If you’re gonna make a film about an artist staying true to the roots of jazz against the odds and against modern reinventions of the genre (from white musicians like, say, Mayer Hawthorne), you'd think that artist would be black.” This opinion was backed by film critic Alison Willmore, who said the nostalgia in La La Land was fueled by white privilege, through Mia seeing herself so easily in the stars of the studio golden age and carrying on their tradition. In addition, “It’s a privilege of whiteness to feel such an unabashed sense of ownership over a genre of music as fundamentally grounded in the black experience as jazz the way Sebastian does.” White savior framing of jazz preservation continues to draw commentary in cultural analyses.
Ryan Gosling’s performance
Gosling noted in 2024 a hand-position error in the ‘A Lovely Night’ sequence that impacted promotional imagery. The moment remains a minor footnote among fans who still debate the physical demands placed on both leads during the lengthy dance rehearsals.
Long-Term Cultural Legacy
La La Land continues to appear on year-end and decade-end lists despite its early detractors. It placed on Looper’s 2024 best PG-13 movies ranking and Washington Post’s 2025 list of standout 21st-century musicals. New York Times readers also voted it among their top 21st-century films. The Writers Guild of America included the screenplay in its 2021 retrospective of notable 21st-century scripts, a nod that surprised some of the film’s original skeptics.
Influence on Modern Musicals
The film is frequently credited with helping reintroduce original movie musicals to mainstream audiences after a long stretch of jukebox adaptations. Later directors have pointed to its use of classic Hollywood framing as a reference point when staging their own numbers. Critics in 2025 placed it alongside titles like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg when discussing how contemporary filmmakers borrow from mid-century musical grammar without direct replication.
The Famous Oscars Envelope Mix-Up
La La Land was announced as the Best Picture winner at the 2017 Academy Awards before the correction to Moonlight. The envelope error became an instant reference point in awards season coverage and remains a staple anecdote in Oscar history recaps through 2026. The moment underscored how closely the film was tied to industry expectations that year.
Chazelle and Gosling's Subsequent Collaborations
The pair reunited for First Man after La La Land. Gosling’s 2024 reflections on the earlier shoot highlighted specific filming details that still resonate with him, including the physical strain of the extended dance sequences and the collaborative shorthand the two developed on set.
La La Land remains a touchstone for conversations about ambition, nostalgia, and the limits of cinematic romance. Its missteps on representation and musical execution keep resurfacing whenever new viewers discover the film or revisit it on streaming. The mix of acclaim and critique has become part of its lasting footprint in contemporary cinema.
