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● Movie Guide · Last updated May 18, 2026

La La Land: Plot, Cast, Ending & Where to Watch

2016 · United States of America · Comedy, Drama, Romance · 2h 09m · English

La La Land is a 2016 United States of America comedy film directed by Damien Chazelle. This guide covers the plot, full cast, an overview of the ending, where to watch, and similar films you might want next.

Read Ending Explained → Movies Like La La Land Where to Watch
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Original Title
La La Land
Director
Damien Chazelle
Writers
Damien Chazelle
Country
United States of America
Runtime
2h 09m
Release
Dec 1, 2016
§ 01 Plot · 6 min read

La La Land Plot Summary

La La Land is a 2016 American musical romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Damien Chazelle. It stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone as a struggling jazz pianist and an aspiring actress who meet and fall in love while pursuing their dreams in Los Angeles. The supporting cast includes John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, Finn Wittrock, and J. K. Simmons.

● Quick takeaway

La La Land (2016) is a United States of America comedy film, directed by Damien Chazelle, running 129 minutes. Mia, an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian, a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars, but as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart. Stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. Critical reception: IMDb 8.0/10, Rotten Tomatoes 91%, Metacritic 94/100. Tagline: "Here's to the fools who dream.." This guide covers the plot, full cast, ending, and where to watch.

§ 02 Cast · 6 roles

Cast and Characters

Ryan Gosling headshot
as Sebastian
Gosling spent months on piano before production to deliver the film's musical performances live on set, and the role's signature is that the playing is the performance. Sebastian is the kind of jazz purist whose argument with the contemporary music industry is the same argument his face makes with whoever happens to be in the next chair. Gosling lets the character's snobbery be genuinely funny and genuinely costly, and the late-film jazz-club coda lands because he has been playing the entire role toward that one room.
Emma Stone headshot
as Mia
Stone won the Best Actress Oscar for a performance whose hardest moment is not the audition that lands her the role but the audition where the casting director's phone rings before she has finished. The film is built around her face under controlled lighting, and Stone's argument for the character is that ambition and grief are using the same muscle. The Audition (The Fools Who Dream) number is the central piece of that argument and one of the cleanest pieces of singing-acting in a contemporary American musical.
John Legend headshot
John Legend
as Keith
Legend's Keith is the film's argument-on-two-legs against Sebastian's vision of jazz purity — a working musician whose contemporary jazz-pop band is paying its members enough to keep the form alive in a register Sebastian refuses to grant standing. The performance refuses to be a villain and refuses to be a saint, and Legend's recording-studio scene with Gosling is the film's most direct conversation about what it costs to keep an old form alive in 2016.
Rosemarie DeWitt headshot
Rosemarie DeWitt
as Laura
DeWitt's Laura is Sebastian's older sister, and the part is structured as a single late-evening kitchen scene that has to carry the film's strongest argument against the romantic plot it is staging. DeWitt plays the conversation as a sibling intervention rather than as a script device, and the result is that the audience understands, from one scene, exactly how Sebastian's family has been quietly funding the apartment he keeps explaining away.
Finn Wittrock headshot
Finn Wittrock
as Greg
Wittrock's Greg is the boyfriend Mia is dating in the film's opening act — an LA-industry-adjacent twentysomething whose dinner-party scene functions as the film's funniest tonal trap. The performance refuses to be the standard romantic-comedy bad-boyfriend; Greg is exactly nice enough that Mia's decision to walk out of his brother's home for an old film at the Rialto reads as a real cost rather than an easy gag.
Callie Hernandez headshot
Callie Hernandez
as Tracy
Hernandez plays one of Mia's three roommates in the apartment-share opening number Someone in the Crowd, and the part is the film's most efficient piece of friendship casting. Tracy is the kind of LA roommate whose closet doubles as the costume department for the night out the film's opening number stages, and Hernandez's energy in that single sequence is what keeps the romantic plot from feeling, on first watch, like the only thing Mia has in the city.
§ 03 · Spoiler Zone · Read with care

Ending Overview

How does La La Land end? Our spoiler-aware breakdown walks through the final act beat by beat — including the choices, motivations, and ambiguous final shot that viewers most often debate.

Read full Ending Explained →
§ 04 Watch · Updated May 18

Where to Watch La La Land

Availability may vary by region and change over time.

A
Amazon Video
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● Available
A
Apple TV Store
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G
Google Play Movies
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Y
YouTube
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§ 06

Frequently Asked

What is La La Land about?

Mia, an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian, a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars, but as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and…

Where can I watch La La Land?

See the Where to Watch section below for the current streaming, rental, and purchase options in your region.