La La Land
Lionsgate | Release Date: December 9, 2016 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
94
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 54 Critic Reviews
Positive:
52
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Observer (UK)Mark KermodeApr 13, 2019
Like the musical itself, the film has timeless charm and a brave sense of adventure. Bravo! Read full review
100
EmpireIan FreerJan 9, 2017
Audacious, retro, funny and heartfelt, La La Land is the latest great musical for people who don’t like musicals – and will slap a mile-wide smile across the most miserable of faces. Read full review
100
Total FilmJamie GrahamJan 9, 2017
Could have been a grand folly but instead it’s just grand. Will make audiences break into grins like its characters break into song. Read full review
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzDec 21, 2016
Utterly magnificent and intoxicating. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperDec 15, 2016
Chazelle’s script is hopeful and sweet and clever and rich. His direction is innovative and captivating. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 15, 2016
Stone is spectacular, and she's reason enough to see La La Land. Chazelle is a born filmmaker, and he doesn't settle for rehashing familiar bits from musicals we already love. He's too busy giving us reasons to fall for this one. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 15, 2016
The real star in La La Land is the movie itself, which pulses and glows like a living thing in its own right, as if the MGM musicals of the “Singin’ in the Rain” era had a love child with the more abstract confections of Jacques Demy, creating a new kind of knowing, self-aware genre that rewards the audience with all the indulgences they crave...while commenting on them from the sidelines. Read full review
100
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallDec 15, 2016
La La Land is a trove of references to musical milestones, not derivative but truly inspired. A more joyful movie for grown-ups can't be found this season. Read full review
100
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonDec 15, 2016
Gosling is terrific as the coolly introspective yet disarmingly charming Sebastian. And Stone is deservedly generating Oscar buzz for her portrayal of an artist who can’t quite believe she’ll ever be anything other than a barista. Read full review
100
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezDec 15, 2016
Here is a celebration of the artistic drive that is also a daring feat of showmanship, as technically accomplished in its own way as “Mad Max Fury Road” or “The Revenant." Read full review
100
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesDec 14, 2016
It’s almost criminal to have to stay in your seat when the contact high of La La Land is goosing you to grand jeté in the aisle. The heart, at least, is at liberty to swell to bursting. Read full review
100
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 14, 2016
Gosling is terrific, playing hangdog and irritable yet still managing to be someone you root for (even if you want to smack him in the head every now and then). Stone is even better. It’s her best performance, and that’s saying something. Their relationship, their chemistry, everything about it, and everything about La La Land is, well, magic. Read full review
100
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottDec 13, 2016
La La Land is a film with strikingly broad appeal. Whether you're a "Star Wars" geek or a hopeless romantic, a jazz fan or somebody who complains they just don't make 'em like they used to anymore, you'll la-la love it. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleDec 13, 2016
It’s a beautiful and hopeful film, coming at a time when there isn’t much beauty or hope in our movies, and it’s the type of picture — a sprawling, exuberant musical drama — that hasn’t been seen in decades. Read full review
100
The Seattle TimesMoira MacdonaldDec 13, 2016
Like a gift from the movie gods, here comes Damien Chazelle’s dreamy La La Land, right when a lot of us are in desperate need of some light. It’s a valentine to cinema, splashed with primary colors and velvety L.A. sunsets. Read full review
100
SlateDana StevensDec 10, 2016
For all its borrowing and bricolage, La La Land never feels like a backward-looking or unoriginal work. Even when not every one of its risks pays off the way that first song does, this movie is bold, vital, funny, and alive. Read full review
100
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 9, 2016
The fact that neither Stone nor Gosling are tip-top song-and-dance artists is, in some ways, integral to their appeal. If they were Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, we might not feel as much of a kinship with them. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 8, 2016
Damien Chazelle’s musical, consistently daring and occasionally sublime, does what the movies have all but forgotten how to do — sweep us up into a dream of love that’s enhanced in an urgent present by the mythic power of Hollywood’s past. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyChris NashawatyDec 7, 2016
It’s stunningly ambitious and thrillingly alive the way the best movies are. Read full review
100
New York Daily NewsJoe DziemianowiczDec 7, 2016
Stone, who wowed on Broadway in “Cabaret,” again shows off some beautiful pipes. She captivates completely from her first frame. Then again, so does La La Land — a singing love letter to musicals, romance and the City of Angels that feels almost like a gift from above. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinDec 7, 2016
The actors carry the music in their gait, their gestures, the rhythms of their speech, so that their singing and dancing is a small but exquisite step up from the way that they normally talk and walk. To rhapsodize about La La Land is to complete the experience. You want to sing its praises, literally. Read full review
100
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 6, 2016
What makes La La Land such a hot miracle is how the passion for cinema and its possibilities radiates from every frame. Read full review
100
USA TodayBrian TruittDec 6, 2016
La La Land is both delightful confection and life-affirming food for the soul. Read full review
100
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaOct 20, 2016
Some of it is wistful, some of it whimsical, but it's all wonderful, impossibly so. Read full review
100
TimeStephanie ZacharekAug 31, 2016
La La Land is both a love letter to a confounding and magical city and an ode to the idea of the might-have-been romance, in all its piercing sweetness. It’s a movie with the potential to make lovers of us all. All we have to do is fall into its arms. Read full review
100
VarietyOwen GleibermanAug 31, 2016
La La Land isn’t a masterpiece (and on some level it wants to be). Yet it’s an exciting ramble of a movie, ardent and full of feeling, passionate but also exquisitely — at times overly — controlled. Read full review
100
CineVueJohn BleasdaleAug 31, 2016
For all its postmodern smarts, La La Land has a heart as big as its Cinemascope screen. This is primarily down to the two leads, without their performances it would only be an empty, if impressive, exercise in dizzying technical skill and style. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinAug 31, 2016
La La Land wants to remind us how beautiful the half-forgotten dreams of the old days can be – the ones made up of nothing more than faces, music, romance and movement. It has its head in the stars, and for a little over two wonderstruck hours, it lifts you up there too. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterTodd McCarthyAug 31, 2016
For Chazelle to be able to pull this off the way he has is something close to remarkable. The director's feel for a classic but, for all intents and purposes, discarded genre format is instinctive and intense. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawAug 31, 2016
I was utterly absorbed by this movie’s simple storytelling verve and the terrific lead performances from Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone who are both excellent – particularly Stone, who has never been better. Read full review
100
The PlaylistJessica KiangAug 31, 2016
La La Land is a film you simply never want to stop watching. It has wisdom and joy and sadness and such magic, from the evocative power of music to the transportative power of movies. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Dec 7, 2016
What the two actors lack in vocal polish they make up for in commitment — and chemistry. La La Land is the third film to romantically pair Gosling and Stone, after "Crazy, Stupid, Love" and "Gangster Squad," and that history of onscreen relationships fortifies their playful rapport: Read full review
91
The VergeTasha RobinsonSep 14, 2016
Its complete lack of restraint, cynicism, or self-consciousness invites viewers to drop their own reservations and just feel the big, broad, simple emotions as they're played out on-screen, through memorable songs and elaborate fantasy sequences. Read full review
91
The Film StageRory O'ConnorAug 31, 2016
It’s a twinkling surface examination of how humans try to coordinate their dreams with their reality (a very Hollywood conundrum), but also a celebration of just how wonderful old filmmaking techniques and emotions look and feel on modern L.A. streets. Read full review
90
The New York TimesA.O. ScottDec 8, 2016
La La Land succeeds both as a fizzy fantasy and a hard-headed fable, a romantic comedy and a showbiz melodrama, a work of sublime artifice and touching authenticity. Read full review
90
We Got This Covered Darren RueckerDec 6, 2016
La La Land feels like a throwback and also like something we've never seen before, resulting in a dreamy musical that hits just about every note. Read full review
90
The New YorkerAnthony LaneDec 5, 2016
Catch the film on the largest screen you can find, with a sound system to match, even if that means journeying all day. Have a drink beforehand. And, whatever you do, don’t wait for a DVD or a download. Read full review
90
ScreenCrushMatt SingerSep 15, 2016
With infectious enthusiasm, charismatic leads, gorgeous songs, vibrant colors, and dazzling camerawork, La La Land restores the original movie musical to its former glory. Read full review
90
TheWrapAlonso DuraldeAug 31, 2016
The musical is as malleable and eclectic a genre as any other, and Chazelle reminds us how effectively it can be applied to intimate moments as well as huge ones. Read full review
88
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanDec 20, 2016
If “Whiplash” was Damien Chazelle’s bullet train through dark regions of the New York jazz world, La La Land is his leisurely bus tour through sunlit fantasies of life in Los Angeles. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 15, 2016
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers they ain’t. Stone’s singing voice is a soulful wisp of a thing. But this is the moment that convinced me the film’s writer-director, Damien Chazelle, knew exactly what he was doing. What his stars lack in training they make up for in relatability. They sing and dance just a little better than we would. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 9, 2016
La La Land isn’t just the best made-for-the-screen musical to reach theaters in a very long time, it’s arguably the best (non-animated) cinematic musical of any kind since 1986’s delightful "Little Shop of Horrors." Yes, it’s more vibrant than "Chicago," more heartfelt than "Les Miserables," and more successfully staged than a chorus of other contenders. Read full review
88
RogerEbert.comBrian TallericoSep 14, 2016
Gosling and Stone get these characters, finding grace in their movement but emotional depth in their arcs; Stone has never been better. Read full review
80
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangDec 8, 2016
For a movie that all but demands that you swoon into its arms, La La Land doesn’t always seem to know exactly how to surrender to itself. Read full review
80
Time Out LondonDave CalhounSep 1, 2016
[Chazelle's] soaring, romantic, extremely stylish and endlessly inventive La La Land is that rare beast: a grown-up movie musical that's not kitschy, a joke or a Bollywood film. Instead, it's a swooning, beautifully crafted ode to the likes of Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Stanley Donen's Singin' in the Rain. Read full review
80
Screen DailyFionnuala HalliganAug 31, 2016
As a drama, this is less nourishing than the heritage it pays tribute to. But for Chazelle, the story is just a slight rib around which he builds a modern rhapsody. Read full review
75
ObserverRex ReedDec 15, 2016
So in spite of its flaws, La La Land has moments of pleasure and satisfaction that are worth the price of admission. It’s not that it’s a bad movie; it’s just not an outstanding entertainment, the way great movies (especially musicals) should be. Read full review
75
ConsequenceSarah KurchakSep 15, 2016
The superficial thrills of the genre are all present and adoringly rendered, but the actual purpose of the whole exercise is much harder to discern. Read full review
75
IndieWireEric KohnAug 31, 2016
La La Land is magically in tune with its reference points even as falls a few notes short of their greatness. Read full review
70
Village VoiceAlan ScherstuhlDec 7, 2016
La La Land...reaches for the stars, doesn't quite grab them all, and then is still kind of OK in the end. Read full review
63
New York PostKyle SmithDec 7, 2016
La La Land deserves credit for high spirits even if it’s essentially a collection of glamorous throwback music videos for so-so songs. Read full review
63
Movie NationRoger MooreNov 29, 2016
Writer-director Damien Chazelle (“Whiplash”) reaches for the stars, and cast the picture beautifully. But this throwback musical (songs by Justin Hurwitz) lurches along on show business cliches in between dreamy flights of fancy. Read full review
58
MTV NewsAmy NicholsonDec 7, 2016
If only the script measured up to the craft. La La Land gives us no reason to root for Mia and Seb’s romance, except for its blithe assurance that you will because you loved Stone and Gosling together in Crazy, Stupid, Love. Read full review
50
Slant MagazineChristopher GrayDec 5, 2016
Every element of La La Land is bound up in a referentiality that largely precludes the outpourings of emotion we come to musicals for. Read full review
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