SPOILERS
I think this is a bad movie. (I thought Whiplash was bad, too.) His childish way to perceive artists as loners who can't be happy and have to dedicate their lives to their PURE ART —which is just about being the most noisy, the same way the first scene of LLL is absolutely graceless but technically difficult, constantly showing how difficult it must have been— makes me mad. But it is not just about what it is about, it is also about how it is done...
He doesn't know to write characters. I'd even say Chazelle is not aware of how dumb they are if there wasn't John Legend saying: "Dude, jazz is about innovation", and Seb's sister mocking her brother...I like Girls so I know it's possible to write assholes in a way I actually enjoy—I mean, in a way they are humans...Mia is not a character, she is an intention...Seb has more development but, like I said, I wonder if Cgazelle is that aware of how ridiculous his character is. At the end, he has his club. Does he save his silly idea of what jazz is? Is it possible to save a silly idea?
It's barely a musical. City of Stars is the only good song in it. They know it. There is nothing but City of Stars during 30 minutes. I said that I dislike the first scene, but not just because Chazelle is filming his camera not caring about the dance, but also because the song SUCKS!
The worst sequence must be at the beginning when she is at her house with her friends, and then they sing? and pretend to dance? and then there is the party where Chazelle does the ending of Whiplash with his camera: being noisy with no character development. No sense of wonder, no real scene: it's just boom, boom, boom...
It's probably my bad, but when Seb calls Emma Stone "Mia" toward the end of the movie I didn't know her name was Mia. I wish she existed, I wish Seb saw her acting once, I wish we could have seen a few seconds of her play. And what about her thing with dudes who could be Trump's sons?
(By the way, the casting for this movie must have been way more ridiculous than the scenes of casting in it. They all could be in an ad for shampoo.)
This movie is bad nostalgia, because it's not about a world that existed or it's about the level zero of fantasy. (I loved when it went meta and said "fuck you" to the viewer, but it made me think that Mia's play must be bad, too.)
The last scene is great and, while being frenetic, it doesn't seem like he's trying to hit us with his camera. But then I remembered about the characters and realized I didn't care. Maybe if her marriage with Trump Jr seemed like more like a real marriage between two human beings who love each other and not just like an excuse for separation?
Chazelle strikes me as an arrogant technical genius writing movies about arrogants assholes. But whatever. I'll just stop seeing his movies.
BUT: it is good that the industry can produce movies who can make me mad that way. I think he's a bad filmaker and writer, but he is a filmaker and a writer.
If you liked it and are interest in musicals, there is this great show on the CW called
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: to me, the first song of the show is the perfect counter-example to the first scene of LLL: a good song with character development (+fun and aware of its own fantasy).