La La Land Trailer (2016)

Trailer for La La Land starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.

In the heart of Los Angeles, aspiring actress Mia serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions while dedicated jazz musician Sebastian plays in dingy bars in order to scrape by. The two meet and fall in love, but, as success mounts, the dreams they worked so hard to maintain threaten to rip them apart.

There are quite a few scenes featuring Ryan Gosling's character Sebastian playing the piano while singing. In order to prepare for the role,  Ryan then spent two hours a day, six days a week in piano lessons learning the music by heart. So, what you see in the movie is actually Gosling playing all of the piano sequences himself.

La La Land has been in the works for a long time. Writer Damien Chazelle wrote the screenplay for La La Land back in 2010. Chazelle couldn't get the film made for years since he didn't have the budget and no studio was willing to finance the project because it was an original contemporary musical. It was not until his next screenplay, Whiplash was released in 2014 and became wildly successful, that Chazelle caught the attention of the movie industry. The film grossed nearly $50 million worldwide off a $3.3 million production budget and earned five Oscar nominations at the 87th Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay for Chazelle, and  Chazelle and his project began to attract attention from studios. Summit Entertainment then agreed to finance the movie.

It has now been over two months since we got the last of the two teaser trailers for La La Land and we finally get a full trailer. The teaser trailer did a great job at introducing us to the feel and the musicality of the film, but did little to give us a taste of the plot and back story. Well...now we get the best of both worlds in this first full trailer for La La Land.

I loved this trailer and the whimsical feel to it. The film feels like nothing I have seen before. Musicals can always be a tough sell because they are typically not box office blockbusters like the slew of recent super hero films, but it feels like a breath of fresh air. In a Hollywood world of remake after remake and sequel after sequel, it is nice to see a film trying to bring something unique.

Ryan and Emma look perfect and the chemistry is on point. The duo is able to sing and dance their way off the screen and even Ryan kills it at the piano. All in all this film looks great and I expect to see its name come Awards season. I will definitely not miss it!