The Nice Guys is an okay. film that works better with your brained turned off and a bucket of popcorn in your lap. Credibility of the film can be found in its roots. Action/comedy buddy cop movie by the director of Lethal Weapon? Check. Ryan Gosling playing a bumbling idiot with a whole lot of physical comedy? Check. Cool 1978’s setting with a noir undertone set in Hollywood? Check. It doesn’t innovate as much as it invigorates the formula.
Nice Guys follows a drunk detective and bruiser for hire as a missing persons case spirals out of control and gets them in the crosshairs of the mob. The actual plot itself isn’t complicated, but the way it progresses from clue to contrivance can actually end up muddling a pretty straightforward mystery. When the curtain is unveiled towards the third act and you figure out what everyone’s fighting over, it’s hard not to laugh at how ridiculous it is and how well it suits the time period and setting (hint: it’s a “experimental” film). The real spice of the film lies in the characters. Ryan Gosling playing Holland March is a fantastic treat. The type of charismatic character that deserves to be placed right next to Johnny Depps’ Jack Sparrow. Every scene he’s in he manages to steal completely whether it’s him having a mental breakdown after stumbling off the roof drunk and landing next to a dead body or when his partner Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) offers to help some poor lady and Holland pipes in “for a deeply discounted price!”

Walking out of the theater I almost completely dismissed the movie from my mind. Forgettable and generic is really all the film is. It does everything right but doesn’t do anything new or great which is the film’s biggest flaw. Its got laughs and action and if you want a nice dose of both then by all means jump on in.