La La Land's clunky dancing

We are not the dancers we once were in America, and maybe that's okay

Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling co-star in La La Land.
(Image credit: Dale Robinette)

For all their crazy chemistry, the stars of Hollywood's new musical, La La Land, don't actually sing or dance all that well. Somewhat surprisingly, this actually makes the movie work.

Musicals are famously one of the most challenging art forms, not just because of their built-in artificiality, but because they require that a dramatist, choreographer, composer, and lyricist collaborate, and that every singer also be a decent actor and dancer. Yet for a movie in dialogue not just with movies but with musicals specifically, La La Land is an intentionally, even aggressively imperfect film.

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Lili Loofbourow

Lili Loofbourow is the culture critic at TheWeek.com. She's also a special correspondent for the Los Angeles Review of Books and an editor for Beyond Criticism, a Bloomsbury Academic series dedicated to formally experimental criticism. Her writing has appeared in a variety of venues including The Guardian, Salon, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, and Slate.