Film Review: The Nice Guys (2016)

Shane Black, the testosterone-addled writer/director behind such guys with guns films as Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, and The Last Boy Scout, isn't wholly to blame for this embalmed-in-nostalgia disaster. It's clear he didn't get the memo. No one who has read the memo would have cast Russell Crowe in anything remotely resembling a comedy. I'm positive a memo was sent out to everyone in Hollywood letting them know that Crowe can't do funny in the same way that Donald Trump can't do rational. The proof is the romantic-comedy A Good Year (2006), in which Russ tried to go the full Hugh Grant and ended up doing a career face-plant that registered on the Richter scale. And I`m positive another memo will shortly be doing the rounds in Hollywood letting people know that Ryan Gosling also appears to be comedy-impaired.

The plot, such as it is, has Crowe and Gosling as, respectively, Jackson Healey,an enforcer for hire, and Holland March, a boozy P.I., joining forces to find a missing girl in 1977 Los Angeles. Also along for the ride is Angourie Rice playing March's precocious 13 year-old daughter. The missing girl, Elaine, is somehow involved in both the porn business and a scandal affecting Detroit's automakers. Various people want her dead and are happy to take out anyone looking for her. As you can see, Black repeatedly hit the cliche key on his laptop when he sat down to write this mess. The thin plot is just a rickety framework for a barrage of dead-on-arrival gags and glitzy, extravagant production design that recreates in lurid detail the era that good taste forgot.

Even if Crowe and Gosling were born comics it's hard to imagine them wringing laughs out of this material. A typical gag has March asking Healey, "What do you call those guys without balls?" March is thinking of eunuchs, but Healey wittily replies, "Married?" This would have been a tired gag in 1977, but Black thinks it's so funny he has his duo do another variation of it later on. Adding a precocious kid into the mix just makes things more like a bad sitcom, and when the girl ends up at a porn producer's party the film takes a turn into the unsavory that it never recovers from. None of the actors survive this train wreck. Gosling and Crowe are poor, Rice is awful, and Kim Basinger as an attorney general is...very odd. When she first appeared on screen I wasn't sure what I was looking at. A Pixar creation? A hologram? And then I remembered that some actors now have it in their contracts that they must be digitally altered to look younger. Basinger doesn't look younger, she looks like a replicant auditioning for a Blade Runner sequel.

Shane Black clearly set out to make a guns and gags version of Boogie Nights. The latter film, however, wasn't fixated on period detail and had a laser-sharp focus on character. The Nice Guys is just a collection of bad jokes dressed up in wide lapels and garish colours. And even the action elements are lacking, which is a shocker in a Shane Black film. Avoid this one and just watch something nasty and funny that was actually made in the '70s like Freebie and the Bean or Busting.

Film Review: The Master (2012)

Like the cult leader at the centre of this film, The Master has presence, style and bombast, but it's also resolutely shallow, long-winded and illogical. Joaquin Phoenix plays Freddie Quell, an alcoholic and all-around dim bulb who comes into the orbit of the "Master". The Master (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is Lancaster Dodd, founder of a cult that bears a passing resemblance to Scientology. In what amounts to a nearly plotless story, Freddie, who would have difficulty holding down a job as a ditch digger, becomes Lancaster's pet project. He keeps Freddie around despite his failings and works to indoctrinate him in his nonsensical ideas about past lives.

The fact that the film looks great and features top-notch acting can't paper over the fact that it doesn't muster a coherent point of view or purpose. The film's main focus is on the relationship between Freddie and Lancaster, and just on that basis the film is a total bust. Freddie is such a witless, loutish fuckup it makes no sense for Lancaster to keep him around. Freddie is the kind of person who makes other people feel intensely uncomfortable and/or creeped out, and Lancaster's inner circle certainly don't seem to like him, so why is Lancaster taken with him? There's no hint of a sexual attraction so we're left with the realization that their illogical relationship is simply the result of bad screenwriting.

The Master also suffers from a surfeit of what could be called arthouse film aesthetic. In practical terms this means scenes are extended past their natural expiration date; meaningful pauses abound; eye-catching shots and artful production design takes precedence over narrative; sequences that should be cut aren't; dialogue is prolix and redundant; and character motivation is always opaque. Writer/diretor Paul Thomas Anderson takes the blame for all this, and unfortunately his stock has been trending downward ever since the superlative Boogie Nights. All his films since then have featured superb acting performances, but his craft as a storyteller has become clumsy and murky. This is hands down Anderson's worst film, and the generally favorable, even fawning, reviews it's received reflect the enthusiasm critics have for Anderson's visual craft and way with actors rather than for his ability to make a film that's as smart as it is sharp-looking. The Master is certainly the best-looking film I've seen in quite a while, but it's also, like Freddie, the most empty-headed.