Why oh why oh why…. do film directors insist on casting stars who can neither sing nor dance into roles that require both? At what point was the skill of Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds or Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers so under-estimated that directors think a film musical doesn’t even need effective, let alone spectacular, song and dance routines. It’s all very well for the stars to take some lessons and become competent at floating voices tunefully, but that doesn’t allow them to communicate effectively in song, and it doesn’t allow the music to lift scenes to an exciting climax. Songs become wafty, willowy, immaterial and somewhat irrelevant – the curse of the pleasant. And it’s okay for stars to deliver competent dance routines based around simple steps and combinations – they’re just not exciting or spectacular, and so the same applies.

Some film musicals, I must admit, have thin stories, and this is no exception. In the case of the classic Hollywood musicals the spectacular song and dance routines provide the excitement, replacing the complexity of narrative with a different type of excess; an excess of movement and energy, of sound and rhythm. Lalaland has neither complex plot nor spectacular song and dance routines (with the exception of the opening dance on the freeway). It looked beautiful but was ultimately a little bit dull. Why oh why oh why is it listed for so many awards?