When "The Nice Guys" premiered a decade ago, it faced stiff competition from blockbusters like "Captain America: Civil War" and "X-Men: Apocalypse," and even lost out to "The Angry Birds Movie" at the box office. Ryan Gosling later lamented that the cartoon birds "just destroyed us." Yet as the film approaches its tenth anniversary this month, it has become one of the most beloved comedies of the past decade, a period during which Hollywood largely abandoned the genre.
Directed and co-written by Shane Black, the 1970s-set comic noir pairs Gosling and Russell Crowe as mismatched private eyes in Los Angeles. Despite earning only $71 million worldwide on a $50 million budget, the film has found a second life on streaming platforms. Black noted, "There's a lot of interest in 'The Nice Guys' today that wasn't there when it opened." It frequently ranks among Netflix's most-viewed titles and enjoys constant cable reruns.
Black, who created the "Lethal Weapon" franchise, has seen his less commercially successful films become cult favourites. "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," released a year earlier, helped revive Robert Downey Jr.'s career. "There's something to being the king of the midnight movie," Black said. "It's not the most lucrative thing in the world."
The film's enduring appeal lies in its chemistry between Gosling and Crowe, neither known for comedy at the time. Black's script, inspired by detective stories from William Campbell Gault and Brett Halliday, centres on a missing girl case. Gosling's Holland March, a private eye who cannot smell, reluctantly teams up with Crowe's enforcer Jackson Healy. The cast also includes Kim Basinger, Keith David, Margaret Qualley, and Angourie Rice as Holland's precocious daughter.
Black reflected on the film's charm: "There's so much joy here. There's so much fun in plot and twists and capers. You light a fuse and these guys go on this wild caper, and in the end, it's just these two guys that are important." As comedy has migrated to streaming over the past decade, "The Nice Guys" has become a staple for fans discovering it anew.
