On a cold and dark winter’s night, La La Land has all the restorative properties of a medicinal balm. The film is set in Los Angeles, a city depicted as a pillbox of pretty people dressed in primary colors who occasionally burst into song.

Mia (Emma Stone), a native of Boulder City, Nevada, moves to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of acting. Despite having braved countless auditions, she has yet to make the transition from the on-studio coffee shop where she works to the soundstage next door. After an evening out, Mia’s car is towed and she is forced to trek home on foot (No Uber? Good question, several scenes depend on the characters not having access to smart phones. Just go with it.). En route, Mia hears the soft song of a piano emanating from a rundown cabaret. She steps inside as Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) launches into a passionate improvisation. The manager of the establishment—played by J.K. Simmons, best known for his performance as the ruthless bandleader in Chazelle’s 2014 film, Whiplash—fires his musician on the spot for not sticking to their predetermined set-list. Doe-eyed Gosling does his best impression of a misanthropic musician as he storms out of the venue, rudely ignoring Mia, who tries to compliment his performance.

It takes a few more scenes for Sebastian to fall for Mia, but from the very first shot, it’s clear that Damien Chazelle has eyes for his starlet. He repeatedly photographs Ms. Stone in close-up—a shot allegedly invented by D.W. Griffith because he was obsessed with his own leading lady, Lillian Gish. Whatever emotion Chazelle needs from Ms. Stone—intrigue, trepidation, uneasiness—he finds in the close-up. The shot is used so many times that it loses dramatic effect. The preponderance of close-ups seem to insist that Mia, the character, is exquisite simply because Emma Stone, the star that plays her, has a pretty face.

In his adolescence, Damien Chazelle was an accomplished jazz drummer. Music has featured prominently in each of his first three films. Evidently, Chazelle’s musical background has influenced the types of stories he is interested in telling. It has also affected the ways in which he tells them. One of Chazelle’s great strengths as a director is his intuition for the rhythm and pace of a story, an instinct that can be traced to his education in musical theory. Chazelle knows how to develop tension by delaying the fulfillment of expectation and how compound sensation by repeating a familiar theme.

Chazelle’s movies are pleasurable because they flow and La La Land is no exception. The film has the sweeping arc of a good pop record, moving from ebullient to melancholic and back again. However, after making it all the way through, I don’t see any sense in consuming the film as a record when its singles are a lot more fun. The plot, a tidy web of cause-and-effect, isn’t crucial to appreciating the La La Land’s best moments. There is no reason why an audience shouldn’t fast forward through the dull bits and watch the best scenes on repeat. The scenes function as distinct units that are remarkable on their own, but the narrative is not sufficiently compelling to render these component pieces a cohesive whole.

The night before attending La La Land, I elected to rent The Band Wagon (1953) a highpoint of mid-century musical comedy starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. This was a mistake, I probably should have done it the other way around. I was dazzled by The Band Wagon, by the Astaire’s precision and grace. By comparison, the dancing in La La Land is unimpressive. No amount of dramatic staging, not even a dance number performed on the highway during rush-hour can make up for Astaire’s technical brilliance. But La La Land still has its charm. Sure, Damien Chazelle could have used professional dancers, but then nobody would have seen the movie. In order to sell tickets, you’ve got to have stars, and given the circumstances, Gosling and Stone perform admirably.

Fortunately, one doesn’t have to make a choice between watching The Band Wagon or La La Land, one can enjoy them both. One of the great things about cinema is that is allows the dead to walk among us, contemporary viewers can marvel at Astaire’s elegance in 2016, the same way that audiences did in 1953. La La Land is ultimately a film that asks its audience to play along. If you’re willing to suspend disbelief, you might just find yourself swept up by its song, dance, and grainy CinemaScope sunsets. La La Land’s greatest achievement is recapturing the spirit of a genre that the rest of the industry had left for dead.