To be fair, a lot of musicals are kinda shitty because they try to have too much standard acting. If you need more than a brief spoken intro to the next song, you're fucking things up. There's exceptions, but very, very few because switching back and forth is just a hard thing for an audience to do, even if they enjoy musicals (and I do).

It isn't even about empathy imo, it's about sustaining the flow of a story. Something like Willy Wonka can work because the songs are supposed to be a break in the flow of the story. The oompa loompas serve a specific role, and thus the movie isn't really a musical.

Something like rent, though, there's very few breaks between the songs, and they're structured well enough that most people aren't jarred out of the immersion. But most isn't all, and it really doesn't mean anything if musicals don't work for you; it isn't some kind of flaw.