Ten years after its debut, the cult of 'The Nice Guys' continues to expand. When the film premiered a decade ago, the writing was on the wall for big-screen comedies. It arrived sandwiched between 'Captain America: Civil War' and 'X-Men: Apocalypse,' opening against 'The Angry Birds Movie.' Ryan Gosling lamented that the cartoon birds 'just destroyed us.'
A Decade of Rediscovery
Marking its 10th anniversary this month, 'The Nice Guys' has established itself as one of the most beloved comedies of the last decade—a period in which Hollywood studios largely abandoned the genre. Directed and co-written by Shane Black, this 1970s-set comic noir pairs Gosling and Russell Crowe as private eyes in a Los Angeles crime caper that only improves with age. 'There's a lot of interest in The Nice Guys today that wasn't there when it opened,' Black noted. 'But people find these things. There's a joy in discovering a movie on streaming or rental and realizing: How did I miss this? And The Nice Guys was easy to miss.'
Now, 'The Nice Guys' is a constant presence on cable and streaming platforms. Whenever it appears on Netflix, it ranks among the most-viewed titles. As more viewers discover Gosling's comic talents in films like 'Barbie' or 'Project Hail Mary,' fans inevitably ask: 'But have you seen The Nice Guys?'
From Box Office Flop to Cult Classic
Black, known for blockbusters like 'Lethal Weapon,' has come to favor his less commercially successful films. A year before 'The Nice Guys,' he made 'Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,' another cult favorite that revived Robert Downey Jr.'s career. 'There's something to being the king of the midnight movie,' Black says. 'It's not the most lucrative thing in the world.'
In the early 2000s, comedy was a moviegoing staple, with films from Will Ferrell, Judd Apatow, and Melissa McCarthy dominating the box office. Hits like 'The Hangover,' 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin,' and 'Bridesmaids' defined the era. But as franchise films grew and international ticket sales became more important, big-screen comedies fell out of favor. 'The Nice Guys,' with a $50 million budget, earned only $71 million worldwide. Horror soon replaced comedy as the genre of choice.
There are signs of a shift: this year, 'Project Hail Mary' and 'The Devil Wears Prada 2' have brought comedies back to multiplexes. However, over the past decade, funny movies have largely migrated to streaming or become cult objects.
The Making of a Cult Hit
Black's initial inspiration for the film, co-written with Anthony Bagarozzi, came from detective stories by William Campbell Gault and Brett Halliday. 'There's so much joy here,' Black says. '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.'
If 'Chinatown' is a detective tale about a Los Angeles private eye without a car, 'The Nice Guys' is about a gumshoe who can't smell. Gosling's Holland March reluctantly teams up with Crowe's Jackson Healy, an enforcer, on a missing girl case. The film is bright and colorful but set against a seedy LA and the adult film industry. Holland's young, wise daughter Holly, played by Angourie Rice, adds depth.
The movie also features an expansive cast, including Kim Basinger, Keith David, and Margaret Qualley in one of her first major roles. But the heart of the film is Gosling and Crowe. Neither was known for comedy at the time; Crowe had just come from the biblical epic 'Noah.' Yet Black, a believer in the Lowell Ganz-Babaloo Mandel school of comedy, sensed they would work well together.
'The thing is, Ryan is just a good actor,' Black says. 'He's funny in everything he does. But he didn't do a lot of outright comedies. For this, the character was not like a Talladega Nights or Step Brothers. It's not that kind of comedy where everything is pushed.'
Black's key is grounding comedy in real characters, akin to the classic buddy movie 'Midnight Run.' That approach may have been lost in a decade of high-concept studio comedies like 'Tag.' But 'The Nice Guys,' sleazy and silly, gave Gosling a platform for some of the most sublime pratfalls in recent memory. His physical comedy—breaking an arm, squealing in pain, or performing a toilet-balancing act—is worthy of Buster Keaton.
'My favorite that he walked in with one day was where he said, 'I saw this movie last night with Abbott and Costello where they meet Frankenstein,'' Black recalls. 'He said, 'I'd like to maybe give that type of energy a try.' What he really meant was: I'm going to do a pitch-perfect Lou Costello impression sitting next to a tree for 60 seconds.'
The Sequel Question
Black is proud of how eager Gosling and Crowe were to appear cowardly, stupid, or inept. 'They wanted to be antiheroes,' he says. Crowe has spoken fondly of the experience, crediting Gosling as the only co-star to regularly make him break character. The inevitable question: Why no sequel?
'It's one of the most common questions I get,' Black says. 'The answer, unfortunately, is nebulous.' He explains the studio's perspective: 'You're saying to a studio: Hey, we want to get these two big stars. It's going to cost even more this time. You're going to spend maybe twice the money on a sequel to a movie that didn't get you what you wanted back. It's a tough sell to take a movie that bombed and make a sequel.'
But would he do it if he could? 'Of course,' Black replies. 'This was designed for that. Like I said, it's a caper. There's these two and they get in a bunch of trouble and here they go again. You want to see them do it again. There's a whole bunch of mystery capers you could throw at these guys. You could make a grounded, potentially very interesting, touching movie set not in the '70s but perhaps in the '80s.'
In 2016, Gosling joked at the London premiere: 'I wasn't at the premiere of The Godfather or Apocalypse Now, but I got a feeling it felt pretty much the same as it does today. You're looking down the barrel of cinematic history.' He was kidding, but perhaps cinematic history is exactly what 'The Nice Guys' has achieved.
