La La Land

The weather forecast yesterday sounded horrible and so we decided to bowl off to the cinema for the second time since this looks like the last of the quiet mid winter business weeks for a while. It was lashing rain as we drove to Chichester because ‘La La Land’, was on at Cineworld a couple of weeks before it came to Littlehampton. I had checked the show times before we left and by the number of times they planned to show the film per day, it seemed that Cineworld were expecting to have hoards of people beating down the doors to get it to see it.

The revues have been more than kind and maybe a little over enthusiastic, which is understandable when new big musicals are thin on the ground these days. The genre classification that I saw was: Comedy-Drama-Musical. Having seen this promised ‘Blockbuster’, I was a little bit disappointed and as for the comedy classification, well that passed me by almost entirely.

It was a drama and it was a musical. The drama part was thoroughly enjoyable and both the leads played their parts well. Emma Stone as Mia, an aspiring actress working as a barista in the film lot coffee shop, was completely believable and Ryan Gosling was excellent as the jazz piano player with the dream of opening his own jazz club, whilst working playing background music un-noticed for tips and insults in somebody else’s club. The story of the two young people, full of ambition, coming together and falling in love was nicely done and ambition fulfilled and love lost worked well.

 

It was the musical part that let it down I felt. The dancing was weak, a wasted opportunity for some serious dancing missed. Neither of the two main stars would have made it past week three on Strictly Come Dancing as we know it in the UK, or Dancing with the Stars as it is in other countries. They might have survived to the point where the really awful people were voted off in the first few weeks of the series. I had wondered about that at the point where I had only seen the poster for the film, I thought it a peculiar shot to use for the poster since neither of them look like professional dancers in that picture.  Craig Revel Horwood would have criticised the ‘Arm-ography’ and Darcey Bussell would have torn their ‘Top line’ to pieces as did I.

Having said that; some of the dances were very pretty but not professional quality and as to the music, I liked the jazz but the songs did not hold a place in the memory and there was never a chance of singing one of them on your way home.

It does show the power of advertising and getting the right people to build something up beyond what the truth of the matter actually is. It was a noble attempt at a big modern musical but it did not keep its promise, even with the big production numbers; to my taste the pair of them dancing up into the stars at the observatory was closest to that promise but sadly neither of them dance like Gene Kelly or Debbie Reynolds, they are only average dancers. It was enjoyable enough though and the acting was what you would expect from these stars.

I passed on this review of mine to my swim lane friend Bekka this morning as she left early for work, missing out the last 300 of the set due to life pressures. I didn’t put her off for a moment and said she was going to see La La Land this evening.

This morning’s swim session:

The first schedule here was for the people in Lane 1

10 mins	Warm Up	Lane 1
Distance	Clock	Swim rest
400	60	6.30
300	30	5.00
200	30	3.30
100	60	2.00
400	60	6.20
300	20	4.50
200	10	3.20
100	30	1.50
400	20	6.15
300	35	4.45
200	20	3.15
100	35	1.45
Swim Down
total	3000

This was the set that Bekka and I were doing together up until she had to go. She in not a competitive swimmer and has no wish to be, it is just something that she likes to do for her personal fitness along with her Pilates classes. As I mentioned above, she missed out on the last 300 of that set. I did do that 300 and continued with a third repetition of the set plus 300 back stroke until the guys had finished.

	Bekka
10 Mins	Warm Up
Distance	Clock time	Swim rest
300	60	8.00
200	60	5.20
100	20	2.40
300	60	8.00
200	60	5.20
100	20	2.40
300	60	8.00
Swim	Down
total	1500