Play Nice

It's only fair to give kudos to Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling—actors who generally tend to take serious roles—for their attempts at slapstick, but the overall cheese factor of The Nice Guys, the newest film from director Shane Black (Iron Man 3), keeps it from ever achieving the levels of cool to which it so obviously aspires. It's 1977 Los Angeles, a smog-laden playground for criminals and "filmmakers," a world wherein porno theaters are still a thing and Jackson Healy (a straight-faced yet enjoyably ridiculous Crowe) can be hired to break the arms of all your problems. When a client hires Healy to help her lose a tail, he is unwittingly thrust into a corrupt world of pornographers, politicians and assassins, and when the client goes missing and the villains come a-looking, Healy teams up with Holland March (the comedically acceptable Gosling), a widower and former cop who tackles private detective work for lonely old folks. March knows better than to take advantage of the elderly but does so anyway, in order to support his daughter Holly (yet another precocious teen played well by Angourie Rice) who, when asked, tells her father that yes, he is a terrible person. What begins as Healy's quest for answers quickly escalates into a multifaceted mystery involving missing persons, LA's seedy underbelly and murdered pet fish.

Though fun to observe the ragtag teaming of such colorful characters at first, the ultimate issue with The Nice Guys is that it just isn't that funny. Gosling has his moments now and again, and there is absolute chemistry in the father-daughter relationship between his ne'er-do-well alcoholic persona and the too-smart-for-her-own-good Holly. He is definitely trying to be a good parent, but she still walks all over him, mostly because he's too drunk to keep up.

Crowe's performance, on the other hand, is not bad, per se, but lacking. There is humor to be found in a bruiser who casually explains to his victims the medical specifics of their impending broken bones, but he never mines deep enough to strike comedic gold. It comes across as one-dimensional and, when played off of Gosling's stab at goofiness, highlights this nagging feeling that they turned one good character into two just OK characters. And this is frustrating, because The Nice Guys comes pretty close to awesome more than a few times, like when a neighborhood teen tells our heroes that he's got a big dick or when Gosling dreams of gargantuan talking Africanized bees.

Kim Bassinger stops by for a pointless role as the head of the Justice Department, but her overall application to the plot is so telegraphed that when we reach what was supposed to be her "Oh damn!" moment, it actually comes across as "Oh duh!" White Collar star Matt Bomer does bring a certain panache to the enigmatic (read: not fleshed-out) and ruthless assassin, John Boy, but he is so under-utilized that he sort of fades from memory when he isn't onscreen, which actually makes clear the film's most glaring fault: There never comes a time when Healy and March are so threatened as to make us worry.

Of course the good guys always win, but it's always fun to reach that cinematic moment that makes us wonder how they'll get out of whatever situation alive. Sadly, this never comes, but that's ultimately just fine, since The Nice Guys is really more of a time-killer than a foray into powerful film. But we knew that, right? Of course we did. We really only went to see the thing because it looked kind of goofy, and we thought it would be fun to see usually dramatic actors get silly. If this was the goal, then they nailed it. Otherwise, it would be wise to take this thing at face value, have a few yucks and then forget about it forever.

The Nice Guys
Directed by Shane Black With Gosling, Crowe and Bassinger
Violet Crown, Regal 14
R,
116 min.

Santa Fe Reporter