Review: The Nice Guys
Monday, May 23, 2016 at 9:46AM 
It’s Eric, with thoughts on the new Gosling/Crowe comedy, The Nice Guys.
I’ll bet this project looked amazing on paper. Bring writer/director Shane Black back to the comic buddy picture world where he started with 1987’s Lethal Weapon. Set the film in the disco-cool world of 1977 Los Angeles. Hire two accomplished dramatic actors, Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe, to play the leads, two low-life losers on the fringe of detective work unexpectedly uniting to hunt for a girl involved in a series of murders in the porn industry. Throw in a cute daughter for Gosling’s character for some sweetness.
So it’s sad to report that the execution of that potentially vibrant cocktail ultimately results in mostly a shrug with The Nice Guys. Black is a talented guy, and it’s clear what he’s going for: these are movie-movie characters, not to be confused with people who act like people do in real life (e.g., we’re introduced to Gosling as he lies in a bathtub full of water in full clothing). His movie-cute daughter is cut right from the kind of eye-rolling clichés we’ve seen for years: full of moxie, swearing beyond her years. But the characters lack the vibrancy that the Mel Gibson and Danny Glover characters had in Black’s original film…there was a live-wire element in Black’s early writing that was surprising and exciting, but here the leads are written as low-key, hangdog guys largely indistinguishable from each other. There’s no real conflict between them, so there’s no tension or drama, nothing to ignite off the other.
Black aims to both recreate an 80s buddy action film and comment on it simultaneously, which he does to varying levels of success throughout the picture. He scores best during a sequence where Gosling and Crowe go to the penthouse level of a hotel, only to second-hand witness a series of comically executed deaths as they are in, out, and back down the elevator. This set piece illustrates what the picture is going for but rarely reaches: a smart take on a “dumb” genre, which both indulges and satirizes the pleasures we’ve come to expect from comic action movies.
The biggest failure here is that Black doesn’t deliver the “comic” portion of that genre requirement. Black and his co-writer Anthony Bagarazzi forgot something crucial: jokes. Their script feels largely devoid of actual intelligent jokes, or entertaining banter, and the feeble attempts here and there mostly fall flat when they do deliver. The laughs don’t land, and Black’s pace with the comedy feels dismayingly languorous.
If anyone needed to do a comedy, it’s Russell Crowe. It’s almost difficult to think back to a time when Crowe was one of our most electrifying dramatic actors, since his choices over the last decade or so have been so colossally boring and serious. There’s pleasure to be had in watching him do something so different and light, but his work here is largely uninspired. He and Gosling never quite find the killer chemistry you want them to reach.
Black finds some inspired bits of comedy for Gosling (an extended door-closing attempt on the toilet, many pratfalls), and Gosling executes them with finesse. Gosling’s acting has more spark than Crowe’s, but he never gets killer funny lines to really drive it home. Perhaps Black didn’t know how to harness what Gosling was conjuring on his own to bring it to a higher level.
The film was shot by the great cinematographer Philippe Rousselot (Queen Margot, A River Runs Through It), but even his work doesn’t feel inspired. It’s pretty much your standard-issue LA crime movie look, and the 70s setting doesn’t invigorate the picture in any particular way either. Sadly, The Nice Guys feels curiously uninventive across the board. It left me feeling mostly bummed.
Reader Comments (11)
It's interesting that people are so won over by Ryan Gosling - the tone of a lot of online stuff (not this particularly) is 'who knew he could be so funny'. But I thought he was really fun/funny in that first one he did with Emma Stone (the name is escaping me) so i'm not surprised to hear he's best in show here.
but why does no one ever mention Kim Basinger who is in the movie! Even you, an 80s movie fan :)
OMG Kim Basinger is in this??? I didn't see her in any of the previews?! An LA Condifential reunion :)
I'm gonna take this review with a grain of salt (similar to my skepticism of thefilmexperiences reviews on musicals - but for the opposite reason). Violent comedy buddy movies aren't exactly thefilmexperiences favorite genre ;).
Ryan was very funny when he hosted SNL. And he's got great delivery on awards shows.
I was hoping this would put Russell back on top. Guess the audiences for his movies have become Les Miserables.
Whatever the merits of this film, it's got a really bitchin soundtrack.
Yes what about Academy Award stealer Kim.
You can't accuse someone of stealing an Oscar when only one other person in the category was deserving of it. Marisa Tomei ripped off her category and her place in it denied Alfre Woodard a second nomination for Passion Fish.
@Nat - Yeah, "Crazy Stupid Love." He was great in that. I wonder if it's because a lot of people still associate him with "The Notebook"? A lot of his movies aren't big box office hits (but CSL did pretty well) so that's still how a lot of people see him as an actor, although he's also very funny in interviews so I'm still not sure why everyone is surprised.
Gosling kind of operates at a different level here than his previous efforts in crazy stupid love. I'm not sure if he's really gone big the way he did here. Though he still has those kind of little twitches in the quieter moments that somehow manages to make this idiot of a character believable.
This movie does have problems but was overall enjoyable. Quite disheartening to see it making as little as it did.
And Kim Basinger was borderline terrible in this, not that she was given much to work with to begin with.
I respectfully disagree on the chemistry. For me, the leads rapport was one of the things I enjoyed most.
In Lethal Weapon, there was often an element of "Look at Me!" "Look at this!". Audiences of that era thrilled to action scenes, rather the the jaded endurance tests of current action set pieces.
I respect that Crowe and Gosling steadfastedly work here as character actors. They resolutely take the character choice every time over "Look at me!" They don't take the energy of the scene and grandstand with it. They are together as acting partners in every scene.
Both Gosling and Crowe respect Angourie Rice as a fellow professional and equal partner.
Nathaniel, I think it is partially about how you first were introduced to Gosling. I've been following him since a little Canadian comedy called Breaker High on which he was hilarious. His darkness (like Half Nelson, for which he totally deserved the Oscar) was the new part for me.
Really loved this, and I'm a bit surprised by the review. I adored Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and if you feel the same, this is a must see.