Full disclosure: I like musicals. I mean, I like the *good* ones. This was a mediocre one. Emma Stone is a joy to watch in every frame she's in and Gosling is... well he's Gosling. The story is about whiny artists whining (sometimes in song) about not being successful and/or selling out and it's a love letter to Hollywood, so it will win all the Oscars, but YAWN.

The opening number is a big crowd dance scene on the freeway…

The first film was so tight and perfect, this one was bound to falter. Good gun-fu and production design, but this chapter failed in two critical respects: 1. it lacks the simple and elegant pathos that made us care about what JW was doing and why he was doing it in the first film, resulting in me basically not caring all that much if he was successful this time around, and 2. the cinematography was stale and turgid compared to…