Movie Review: The Nice Guys


First off, Ryan Gosling is bae, so I will see pretty much any movie he's in. There's been a few I didn't enjoy - Drive, for example - and a few that I loved, like Crazy, Stupid, Love, The Notebook, and The Ides of March (in which I was also an extra). I'm also a fan of Russell Crowe. However, The Nice Guys was a bit too much slapstick for me, and it ran a little slow as well, so overall I wasn't that impressed with it.

The plot of The Nice Guys is a bit all over the place - the official IMDb description says: "A mismatched pair of private eyes investigate the apparent suicide of a fading porn star in 1970s Los Angeles." Holland March (Gosling) and Jackson Healy (Crowe) end up together since they are looking for the same girl, Amelia, and wondering what her connection is to Misty Mountains (Murielle Telio), a porn star that died in a car crash. March's daughter, 13-year-old Holly (Angourie Rice), wants to help them solve the case too, and she sneaks off with them when they interview people. Amelia's mother, Judith (Kim Basinger), ostensibly wants to find her too, but we find out later that her motives are a bit shady.

The music and costumes in this film were on-point, as the movie takes place in 1977. Although some of the film is serious, there is comedy throughout, even when Gosling and Crowe are battling the bad guys (one of whom is played by Matt Bomer, near the end of the film), but unfortunately I didn't laugh at most of it; the audience at the screening I attended, however, seemed to enjoy it.

Maybe see this movie. The cast is great but for me, it just wasn't that funny - I was hoping for it to be a "laugh out loud" kind of film but instead, at least for me, there were only chuckles throughout. It's definitely not the worst Gosling and/or Crowe movie I've seen, but it's not one that I will be rewatching at any point either. I'd recommend this film for anyone who enjoys slapstick (think The Three Stooges) or people doing dumb things in order to elicit laughs; that might be a bit harsh, but at least you'll know what you're getting in to before you go.

The Nice Guys is in theaters today, May 20th, and is rated R with a runtime of 116 minutes. 2.5 stars out of 5.

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