Chances are, after yesterday’s events in DC, you’re feeling a little bruised. Traumatised, even. So, you are likely seeking some escapism and, given that literal escape by moving to Mars is, for now, not a possibility, it is also likely that everyone and your mum will suggest you go and see La La Land, written and directed by 31-year-old Damien Chazelle. And sure, it is a gorgeous movie, as far from Trump as The Wizard Of Oz is from getting a root canal. But, actually, I didn’t love it, which is strange, because two of my favourite genres are movies about movies, and films in which the female lead is blatantly better at singing and dancing than the man, and La La Land cheerfully ticks both those boxes.

There are many reasons this movie failed to make me feel as if I was dancing on the ceiling of the Griffith Observatory, but the main one was this: Ryan Gosling’s character is every bad date I have ever had. Gosling plays Sebastian, a jazz snob, the kind whose response to a woman saying she “hates jazz” is to tell her she’s wrong and take her to a jazz club on every date thereafter. He is also, as a sidenote, often an actual jerk, one who thinks it is acceptable to barge aggressively into a woman because he feels unappreciated by Da Man, and then not apologise to her until months later, and only because she orders him to do so.

But the movie paints all this as part of Sebastian’s old-fashioned passion, and if he’s rude sometimes, well, that’s because he is – as he proudly says – “a romantic”, too busy defending freestyle jazz against music that doesn’t sound like noises you’d hear in an animal rescue home to worry about manners. I realised this movie and I were not about to embark on a romance when Sebastian’s dickish behaviour gets him fired from his piano-playing job, meaning he then has to play keyboard in an 80s tribute band, knocking out songs like Take On Me – and the movie depicts this as his “humiliation”.

Take On Me! One of the greatest songs ever written! I’d love to hear more about your artistic soul, Sebastian, but I’m too busy dancing to music that people with ears actually like.

Academic studies have been written about how romantic heroes in movies are often terrible people: stalkers, obsessives, narcissists, immature assholes. Sebastian is pretty much identical to Andrew, the jazz student in 2014’s Whiplash, who sneers at anyone – girlfriend included – who doesn’t share his musical taste. In this film, he’s coated in the romanticised twilight of a musical. As it happens, Whiplash was also written and directed by Damien Chazelle, and I found it hard to focus on La La Land because I was distracted by an increasingly pressing question: did I once date Damien Chazelle?

Every woman has dated the jazz snob. Even Sex And The City did an episode about Carrie dating a jazz snob, who managed to be more annoying than the twentysomething man Carrie slept with in another episode. And all thirtysomething women know there are few things worse than dating a twentysomething man (#yesalltwentysomethingmen).

The jazz snob doesn’t have to be into jazz; he just has to believe that his preferred music is the only acceptable music, and that any woman lucky enough to be in his sphere must show their worthiness by appreciating it, too. I have dated men who insisted I love reggae, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Arab Strap, Mogwai and the Red Hot Chili Peppers (that one didn’t last long).

Jazz snobs don’t even need to be into music: those guys who insist on ordering your drink because only they understand what makes a good cocktail? How you absolutely must swap your Starbucks for the fresh roasted beans they will hand-grind every morning? How you must respect their childish obsession with (insert name of sport team) while they make fun of your interest in fashion/romantic comedies/80s music? Jazz snobs, one and all.

I use the male gender advisedly, because I have yet to meet a woman who insists on imposing her taste on everyone around her. Meanwhile, I have largely dated men like that, who think the world needs to shape itself around them, and who confuse their interests with their sense of self, who are incapable of accepting that different people have different tastes. This is what happens when male entitlement meets boyish insecurity, otherwise known as A Really Bad Date.

Sadly, La La Land was more like a terrible memory rush. I should have gone to Manchester By The Sea, the other big Oscar-bait movie, about a dead brother and a tragic relationship. Comparatively, that sounds a hoot.