In fact, his hat-trick greatly one-ups 2011 Best Picture Oscar winner The Artist, which was a silent film homage accomplished through shear imitation. Building upon his short musical Guy And Madeline On A Park Bench (perhaps a bit too much as the film's only failing is that it runs too long) with a cornucopia and cacophony perfectly suited for the here and now, his musical is original in the best sense. Neither a jukebox musical nor a Broadway adaptation, his La La Land is a rare beast thought extinct. That this showstopper kicks off the film and a blue note ends it while still making the audience beam from ear to ear speaks to the brilliance of director Damian Chazelle. 'Another Day of Sun' proves less of an earworm but backs the film's showstopper moment-a one-take, traffic-snarled freeway song-and-dance number. Oh, 'City of Stars' won't ultimately achieve the classic status of, say, 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' from The Wizard of Oz, but definitely qualifies as toe-tapping and memorable. Just as a western must present at least one key scene set in or that strongly brings to mind the untamed mythic expanse known as the American West, a musical has to boast at least one notable song. To remain vital in that gnat's-attention-span known as modern pop culture, a musical must implant one key feature into the brain of filmgoers: a hummable tune. Ultimately, La La Land is a hat-trick.albeit a very accomplished hat-trick.

If that doesn't speak to many of today's workaday Americans, then the musical is not only merely dead, it's really most sincerely dead. It's a dessert and a floor wax.er, rather, it's nostalgic, romantic, and also terminally cynical all at once while dancing backward in high heels.

Instead, the entire song-and-dance - we're taking the film as a whole - knowingly keeps it from tripping over its own feet into a brink called cornball. This could very easily have gotten so on-the-nose schmaltzy that the scene required an animated Disney sidekick. Take for instance a date night rendezvous shot in the Griffith Observatory, which literally sees the leads taking flight and dancing among the stars.

While some great musicals like All that Jazz get downright bleak, La La Land softshoes into the dark without every fully losing its color and buoyancy. Indeed, La La Land lovingly tips its hat to such entertainment industry-set musicals as Singin' in the Rain and New York, New York but also charts a millennial-appropriate melancholic course all its own. In this PG-13-rated musical, a pianist (Ryan Gosling) and an actress (Emma Stone) fall in love while attempting to reconcile their aspirations for the future amid navigating their divergent careers in Los Angeles. Singing and dancing its way into the hearts, minds, and ears of even those who think that Chicago was a complete waste of time, elegant, enchanting, edgy and elegiac tune-up La La Land often looks like an homage to Golden Age H'Wood but sports enough lovestruck spark and - alternately - jaded spunk to qualify it as a true modern-day genre original.

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