La La Land should have been a disaster. Every American movie musical it resembles has been. The plot of La La Land recalls Martin Scorsese’s tiresome New York, New York, released in 1977; both feature a principled and snobbish jazz musician who falls in love with an overeager novice performer. Its highly stylized use of Los Angeles recalls Francis Ford Coppola’s stylization of Las Vegas in the simultaneously overproduced and undercooked One from the Heart from 1981. Its use of non-singers and non-dancers as singing and dancing leads recalls Woody Allen’s 1996 Everyone Says I Love You, which proved to be a cringe-inducing embarrassment for almost everyone concerned.

Legends Scorsese, Coppola, and Allen sought to modernize and refresh the movie musical and, instead, laid eggs the size of the spaceships in Arrival. With La La Land, a 31-year-old whippersnapper named Damien Chazelle has done nearly everything right. Where La La Land‘s predecessors were leaden and obvious and as appetizing as fallen soufflés, Chazelle’s confection is light and airy. It’s fun and frolicsome and playful in a way few movies are these days. But it is far from insubstantial. Once it has completely earned your affection, La La Land makes startling use of what it has earned in an inspired, highly emotional extended finale that leaves you simultaneously stunned and transported.