Let's talk about arguably the most successful film of 2016, Lalaland. Released on Friday for us and in December for the US, Lalaland has received 182 nominations, 127 wins and this includes Best Actor and Actress Golden Globes. With a budget of between $20-30 million dollars, after just under a month Lalaland has made almost $130,000,000. I adore this film, it's an absolute masterpiece! It's had mixed reviews but now I'm going to tell you why I am so besotted.

What's Lalaland about? Sebastian, played by Ryan Gosling, is a jazz pianist who scrapes a living by playing at cocktail parties, and Mia, played by Emma Stone, is an aspiring actress that serves lattes to film stars in-between auditions. They keep bumping into each other and as they begin their love affair success dwells for both, important decisions threaten their flimsy relationship and could rip them apart.

One factor that is most important about the success of Lalaland, in my opinion, is that it doesn't try too hard to be a musical. What I mean by this is that the musical numbers don't occur for no reason, for example we're eating lunch so we're going to sing about eating lunch; both the lyrical and dance numbers come at points in the story when it's necessary to create atmosphere or emotion. The Griffith Park Observatory scene for instance, Mia and Sebastian go on a date and the melody begins to play, they then begin to dance around the observatory and in the planetarium. It stands out because it's gentle yet exciting sort of like a first date may make you feel, it's just enough to make us feel rather magical. In fact, the soundtrack is my whole life, I feel like a Hollywood, Disney Princess when I listen to certain songs. Even if you don't want to see the film just listen to that soundtrack; I feel like it's so different (in reality it's probably not) personally I've never listened to anything like it- I don't listen to Jazz inspired music though.

As for star appeal, the only 'big' stars in the film are Stone, Gosling and J.K Simmons (Whiplash, Spiderman). Music wise, you have John Legend who plays Keith, an old acquaintance of Sebastian's; I have to be honest his acting wasn't top notch but he's not an actor so you can't expect anything- the music was of course phenomenal. I also feel that Legend's character brings up one of the prominent issues of not only the film itself but our culture nowadays. Sebastian is a traditionalist in terms of Jazz, the way it should sound etc and Keith says 'How are you gonna be a revolutionary if you're such a traditionalist? You hold onto the past, but jazz is about the future.' I honestly believe that this is one of the key focal points of this film, the film itself is a new, modern take on the original 50s musicals! It's about taking what you have and revamping, not forgetting about the influence and where it came from. In our modern society, we want everything to be new and shiny, I feel like a majority don't appreciate past work- if we didn't have Hitchcock we wouldn't have certain film directors, actors or films in general. Myself, I feel like this film is a starting point in a new age of musicals, I hope so anyway because it's brilliant.

In terms of Gosling and Stone, fantastic. Before watching this, I'd never really watched a Gosling film that intrigued me, I've never watched The Notebook simply because it doesn't appeal to me. I need to watch Drive and let me just say The Big Short is immense, I'd never been so interested in the world of high finance. Stone, it really goes without saying, she's flawless and no one trick pony. Vocals from both fit like a jigsaw piece and together are heaven, all the piano playing we see is by Gosling himself who is also in a band (Dead Mans Bone). Everything about the original soundtrack is so rich, unique  and uplifting... just everything.

One of the main differences from past Hollywood musicals is that this actually makes some sort of sense, I've talked about this with some people and we always bring up Singin' in the Rain, which is about a silent film production company making the transition to sound and Gene Kelly ends up singing in the rain. What? There's an actual narrative to Lalaland, if you take away the musical numbers you'd still have a film that makes sense and goes somewhere. 

Finally, the mise en scene in Lalaland is spot on. It's classy, aesthetically pleasing and just gorgeous. The costume designers favourite outfit of Mia's is actually the white dress near the end of the film, again it's rather Marilyn and very old Hollywood. One of the end scenes, which I won't reveal, is one of my absolute favourite scenes ever. It uses colour, music and set design so perfectly, the sequence, in context, is fun but completely devastating at the same time. The dance sequence is unreal, I only wish I could be in such an extraordinary position to do something like Lalaland as a job.

I'd highly recommend going to see Lalaland whether you like musicals or not. It's comic, it romantic and it's dramatic; it's not one genre, it's a mixture of a lot of things. I feel Lalaland brings a bit of everything to the table, some old Hollywood and a lot of new. A lot of the time we see pretty much the same films released all the time now, that's why it's so nice to see a film being regarded so highly for being so different. This film will go down in history, it's swept the Golden Globes and is set to with the Bafta's and the Oscars. Moreover, I feel as though it'll be remembered for bringing back societies adoration of music and musicals. It hasn't even been out for a month and rumours are already spreading about a Broadway musical, which will of course be an absolute sell out if produced correctly. This is slightly bias, I am totally head over the heels with everything to do with this film. However, I honestly wouldn't recommend it if I thought you'd be wasting your money, who knows Lalaland could turn you into a die hard musical fan. You'll have to watch to find out, Emma Stone did say 'this is a film for dreamers'.