hammettman: Scorpitron is reduced to a thin red paste: Abe Vigoda's Ghost: I never saw the movie. I do like musicals, but this one just seemed like it was going to be Hollywood having a circle jerk.

Was it any good?

This is kind of strange to say, I suppose, but I never 'bought in' to it as a musical. Ordinarily, I feel like a musical needs to give its reason for existence, the reason for why people are singing, etc. Where is the music coming from? "This is a place where people sing and dance their passions. They will tell you what they are thinking, or sing their worries to each other. It will make sense to you, because you've bought in."

Musicals do this in many ways. A slightly 'unrealistic' vibe, a heightened sense of energy or something like that. A movie like Grease or Singing in the Rain or Westside Story establishes its 'rules' right away.

I felt like La La Land never does this. It starts with a bunch of people stuck on an overpass getting out of their cars and singing and dancing, but never really sold me on why this was happening. I'm too dumb to know why, but it just felt off.

As a Los Angelean, at the very least, one has to appreciate the technical achievement of this scene.  It's a musical, so yeah, they're going to sing and dance and the tone gets set in this first scene.  Because it was a practical location, I kept wondering how the fark they pulled it off.  At first, I thought maybe it was an unfinished section of the 105 that merges onto the 405, but that's been done for years.  Finally, I did read that they actually got a permit to shut down that overpass for some time to quickly do the scene.  Had I been caught in that traffic jam, I probably would've hated it on principle alone.