“La La Land,” (2016) July 20, 2017, DVD, home. So yes, it was an homage to Hollywood musicals and movies past, and yes it was light, and yes, it was ‘clean,’ and yes everyone was young and beautiful, and yes it starred Ryan Gosling as Sebastian, the brilliant white jazz pianist committed to saving the art form, and yes it starred Emma Stone as Mia, the talented, undiscovered actress struggling to get her big break. It was all these things and more and I still enjoyed this solid, nice, big-little, sincere film. Lovely bows (they used the same credit fonts!) to Casablanca and, of course, he had to play that song again when she entered his club. Fantasy riffs that a Bollywood director would envy. It was fun and kind, with not an F-bomb dropped and no nipples on view, not even RG’s. John Legend shone as the talented band leader who leads Ryan’s Sebastian back from a dead end with edge and style. JK Simmons seems to have lots of fun in a tiny self-conscious role as a club owner when he almost turns himself inside out to play the exact opposite character of his performance in “Whiplash”. Gosling’s voice is reedy and rather thin, but the song and dance mostly worked, and it is fun to watch Gosling and Stone work together. They have good chemistry. It definitely didn’t deserve the Oscar, but I’m glad I saw it. Bronwen was glad we saw it too, but she was also glad we took it out of the library and didn’t pay to see it.