A musical about not just one, but two people chasing their dreams. One a jazz musician the other an actress who sings. They fall in love with each other but, this is not a cliched love story. They find balancing anti social careers and maintaining a relationship challenging.
Most of the music in the film fits in naturally, because there is the background of the jazz music and she sings. There is just a few set pieces, where a scene segways into song; sometimes distracting from the plot line. However, overall the musical inserts did not spoil the flow of the drama being played out or extend the film unessecarily. I prefer films to be condensed to goodness of less than 2hours. This was 2hours and 8minutes and I was concerned it may have been padded with irrelevant song / dance numbers , but it was not and the film was the right length for the story and crucially for me there was a strong plot not just a few loose segways between a sequence of songs.
I had heard about the opening scene being a big dance number on a highway that had to be closed for two days for filming; as I had heard about it in advance it was not quite the spectacular I had thought it might be. Following the opening there was drama, heartbreak, feel good moments, twists and turns which provided a powerful conclusion making the film impressive rather than just watchable.
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