La La Land is a love story that spends two hours proving love isn’t the point. I’ve watched this movie every time I remember someone, and I keep hearing it described as a happy, candy-colored musical about two beautiful people. On Sunday night, I rewatched it and noticed that Mia and Sebastian were right not to end up together.
This La La Land movie review is about why a film this bright leaves so many people quietly wrecked, and why I think its ending is the only honest one it could have had. Spoilers start in the ending section.
What to Know About La La Land (2016)?
La La Land is Damien Chazelle’s follow-up to Whiplash, with music by Justin Hurwitz (his friend since their college band days at Harvard) and lyrics by Pasek and Paul.
It opened the Venice Film Festival on August 31, 2016, where Emma Stone won Best Actress, and reached US theaters that December. La La Land earned about $526 million on a $30 million budget. It won all seven of its Golden Globes, tied the record with 14 Oscar nominations, and won six, including Best Director for Chazelle, who at 32 was the youngest person to win it.
Storyline of the Movie
Mia Dolan (Emma Stone) serves coffee on the Warner Bros. lot between auditions that go nowhere. Sebastian Wilder (Ryan Gosling) is a jazz pianist who dreams of opening his own club, but pays rent playing background music in restaurants.
After a traffic jam in the opening number, they keep colliding: a honk on the freeway, a missed hello, a party where he’s stuck playing 80s covers. By the time they dance on a hillside above the city, they’re already in love.
Each pushes the other to stop waiting. Mia writes her own one-woman show. Sebastian joins a successful band led by his old acquaintance Keith (John Legend), trading the music he loves for the money he needs. Their schedules drift apart, and the film tracks how love and ambition quietly start competing.
What is La La Land About?
On the surface, it’s about an aspiring actress and a struggling jazz pianist who fall in love in Los Angeles, and underneath, it’s about the price of becoming the person you dreamed of being.
The title carries both meanings. “La La Land” is a nickname for Los Angeles, and it’s also slang for being out of touch with reality. Chazelle never decides which one he means. The dream and the delusion live in the same city, often in the same person.
What makes it feel human is that everyone around Mia and Sebastian keeps telling them to be realistic. The film honors them for refusing, but it’s honest about what refusing costs.
La La Land Explained: The Idea at the Center of the Film
The film’s real argument is that love can be real and still not win. Mia and Sebastian each get what they dreamed of because of the other, and each pays for it with the other. The relationship was the scaffolding, not the building.
There’s a paradox in the middle, too. Sebastian loves jazz as a museum piece and wants to save it by keeping it exactly as it was. Keith pushes back: if you refuse to let jazz change, you’re not saving it, you’re burying it. The film makes the same point about itself.
It’s a love letter to classic Hollywood musicals that insists the past can’t be kept intact. Even Mia and Sebastian’s date to a screening of Rebel Without a Cause ends at the Griffith Observatory, the same place the older film shot at.
“Mia and Sebastian’s Theme” - The Melody That Tells the Whole Story
Hurwitz wrote the theme as a gentle waltz in 3/4 time that opens up into jazz later on. The first time you hear it, Sebastian is playing it alone and Mia, drawn in from the street, stops to listen. It sounds like an invitation.
By the end, the same melody scores a montage of the life they didn’t live, and it plays like an elegy. Same notes, two different meanings, and the whole film lives in that gap.
“City of Stars,” sung by Gosling and later as a duet, won the Oscar for Best Original Song. The opening number, “Another Day of Sun,” is staged as one continuous take on a real freeway interchange. The movie asks you to believe in the fantasy before it asks you to accept the cost.
Hint: If you have read my (500) Days of Summer review, then you probably have an idea of what type of feelings Sebastian has.
What Happens at the End
Mia’s one-woman show flops, and she retreats to her hometown of Boulder City, Nevada. Sebastian learns a casting director saw the show and wants her to audition. He drives out and convinces her to go. She gets the role and heads to Paris.
Before she leaves, they promise to always love each other and to see where life takes them. Then the film jumps five years. Mia is a star, married to someone else. By chance, she and her husband wander into a jazz club called “Seb’s,” named with the logo she once sketched.
Sebastian sees her and plays their theme. The film unspools a fantasy of everything that might have been: the life together, the kids, the version where nothing had to be given up. Then it snaps back. They exchange a nod and a small smile, and she leaves.
It isn’t tragic. Each got what they dreamed of, and the smile is gratitude. The ending is often compared to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, another musical that lets its lovers go.
I’ll rate this movie 5 out of 5
This is one of the most honest films about ambition I’ve seen, and the music alone earns a place on your playlist. I’m holding back half a point because it’s a film about Hollywood dreamers made with Hollywood’s own affection, and neither lead is a trained singer, which some viewers never fully forgive.
It’s romantic, bittersweet, and brave enough to let its couple go. If you’ve ever had to choose between a person and a path, it will probably find you.
Questions, Answered
Did Ryan Gosling play the piano in La La Land?
Yes. Gosling reportedly began learning jazz piano about three months before filming with Los Angeles teacher Liz Kinnon, and no piano double was used for his on-screen playing.
Is La La Land a musical?
Yes. It’s an original musical, not adapted from a stage show, that blends romance, comedy, and drama. Gosling and Stone sing and dance their own numbers, including “City of Stars” and “Audition.”
Where was La La Land filmed?
It was filmed across Los Angeles and nearby areas. The opening number was shot at a freeway interchange, “A Lovely Night” at a Griffith Park viewpoint, and the Observatory scene at the real landmark.