I do not like musicals. I find them obnoxious, over-done, and unrealistic with the musical aspect of the film often seeming to break the flow of the story and hurting the movie overall rather than adding to it. So it means a lot when I say that La La Land completely blew me away and I fell in love with it after my first viewing. Damien Chazelle tastefully adds the musical aspect of this movie to the point where I feel like it truly adds to the story and film altogether. In the opening scene, everyone is stuck in traffic and then randomly breaks out into a happy song and dance and then immediately gets back into their cars and begins honking and being angry again. To me, this almost was a way of Chazelle pointing out how absurd some musicals can be and how the music can be quite random and not related to the scene at all. Why is everyone singing and dancing when they are supposed to be upset and stuck in traffic? From this point, I knew this was not a typical musical. The story itself is beautiful and I was truly invested in it throughout the whole movie. There are moments of happiness, sorrow, laughter, and pain, and the music only intensifies these emotions, using certain songs to draw back on previous feelings and bring the film in a full circle. On top of this, I find the songs in the film to be really enjoyable and I would go out of my way to listen to them on their own. Overall, La La Land is a film that surprised me and I would recommend that everyone see this film even if they do not like musicals.