It's strange to consider just how versatile of an actor Ryan Gosling can be when he isn't playing a silent recluse with a perpetual state on confusion visible through his facial expressions.
La La Land felt like a step into a newer direction with his character showing more emotion and generally having a bit more dialogue than his other previous roles have, but like La La Land, it took me forever to finally sit down and watch The Nice Guys, despite receiving some heavy praise.
It's worth noting that the performance in The Nice Guys by Russell Crowe is especially engaging, with his career often feeling like a field of mines. His best works sticking to roles that display a dated time, with a dated set of rules of living. It's interesting to see him take a more modern role, and seeing it work so well.
Surprisingly, The Nice Guys doesn't sit on the back of its well-known actors and likable characters, but the writing that focuses on the rather than the story at large. Narrative structure is simplistic, having the story unfold to the viewer as the same time as the characters, allowing their dialogue and actions really take over; something that's often overlooked in modern comedies, where the focus is something funny at least every minute, with frequent pop culture references that luck substance.
For the most part, the film is your typical action-comedy setup: two opposites coming together to achieve the same goal, albeit for different reasons, with their conflicting personalities evident throughout. It takes a lot to pull off successfully, but The Nice Guys never oversteps and fully understands its boundaries. It's comedy is self-aware, and never feels forced, and its narrative is simple enough to follow without it feeling like too much of one or the other.
While the film is standalone, it almost feels as if it's preparing the viewer for more entries, and this film is simply establishing the world and its main characters, but fortunately, that isn't the case. Here's finally a modern comedy done right, in a genre that can be seen as a sea of try-hard attempts.