La La Land didn’t just tap into the old-school magic of Hollywood musicals. It cracked it open and reassembled it with bare hands and trembling hope. It was a movie about chasing art in a city built to sell it, about falling in love and falling apart at the same time, and about the quiet ache of realizing dreams don’t always come packaged with the person you dreamt them with.
If you loved La La Land—not just the colors or the songs, but the ache, the yearning, the inconvenient truth of ambition—these 12 films might hit the same emotional chords. Not as if they copied La La Land, but they share its heartbeat: joy tangled with loss, beauty shadowed by cost.
1. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
The DNA of La La Land is practically watermarked with Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Everything is sung, even the mundane. It’s pastel-hued and heartbreak-laced, a musical where love doesn’t get the last word but memory does. Watch it and you’ll see where La La Land got its final sequence blueprint, and perhaps its melancholic wisdom.
2. Moulin Rouge! (2001)
Baz Luhrmann’s fever dream of tragic love and theatrical flair feels like the spiritual big sister to La La Land. Both movies burst into song mid-sentence and aren’t afraid to risk being ridiculous in service of being sincere. At its core, Moulin Rouge! is about the price artists pay for passion. And that theme never goes out of style.
3. Sing Street (2016)
Set in 1980s Dublin, this scrappy little musical is one part teenage rebellion, one part love letter to new wave music, and all heart. Like La La Land, it’s about building your own world to survive the one you’re given. Bonus: it actually predates La La Land by a few months, but they could be cinematic cousins.
4. Once (2007)
If La La Land is the gleaming fantasy of musical romance, Once is its stripped-down, acoustic version. It’s about a street musician and an immigrant, and their brief, almost-love story told through song. What makes it devastating isn’t what happens. It’s what doesn’t. Kindred spirits. Different paths. Sound familiar?
5. West Side Story (1961 & 2021)
Both versions of West Side Story are worth watching if you’re exploring the crossroads of dance, longing, and cultural divide. The Spielberg update especially shares La La Land’s modern polish and reverence for musical tradition, even as it sharpens its political edges.
6. Tick, Tick… Boom! (2021)
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s tribute to Jonathan Larson’s pre-Rent struggle has that same frantic pulse you feel in La La Land. That quiet panic that your best work is still inside you, but time keeps moving forward. It’s a love story, too—not just between people, but between artists and the cruel clock of mortality.
7. A Star Is Born (2018)
Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s version of this oft-remade tale is another modern musical that gets the cost of ambition just right. The way love and success jostle for attention, and how one often overshadows the other, mirrors La La Land’s And yes, “Shallow” could sit comfortably next to “City of Stars” on your playlist.
8. Funny Girl (1968)
Barbra Streisand’s Fanny Brice is all heart and hustle. She’s a woman too much for the man who loved her. Sound familiar? It’s easy to see echoes of Mia in Fanny’s rise to fame and in the lonely realization that sometimes, love can’t keep up with the life you’re building.
9. An American in Paris (1951)
Gene Kelly’s post-war Parisian daydream is full of ballet, whimsy, and longing. Damien Chazelle has cited it as an influence, and it shows. The film’s bold, uninterrupted dance sequences and bittersweet ending carry the same DNA: love and art battling for center stage.
10. Cabaret (1972)
Not everything in La La Land is light. Cabaret is a reminder that some musicals are full of shadows. Liza Minnelli’s Sally Bowles lives in a world teetering on the edge of history, but she still sings, still dreams, still believes. It’s seductive, political, and never fully safe. Just like real life.
11. The Artist (2011)
Though not a musical in the traditional sense, The Artist is about the music of silence. It’s about losing relevance in a changing Hollywood. It echoes La La Land’s fascination with old versus new, love versus legacy. Plus, it’s another example of modern filmmakers paying tribute to a bygone cinematic era.
12. Fame (1980)
Sometimes the chaos of chasing your dream needs to be messy, raw, and a little loud. Fame is about that moment when ambition first blooms. You’re young enough to believe, but old enough to know the odds. It’s gritty where La La Land is graceful, but the hope is the same.
Musicals have always done this strange thing where they dress pain in sequins and let it dance. That’s what La La Land did so brilliantly. It told you the truth, but made it sing. These films do the same, each in their own way.
Not every song ends with a kiss. Not every duet becomes a love story. But sometimes the dream is enough. Or as Sebastian might say: “This is the dream. It’s conflict, and it’s compromise, and it’s very, very exciting.”
Watch these movies if you’re chasing that feeling. Or if you’re still humming “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” and wondering how something can hurt and heal at the same time.
