In the Noclip documentary series on Doom (2016), creative director for the game Hugo Martin cites The Last Boy Scout as one major influence for the tone of the game. He talks about how The Last Boy Scout is buddy cop style movie with Bruce Willis that came out at a time where making that kind of movie with Bruce Willis as the star was totally cliché, but that the movie did so intentionally. He talks about what a sigh of relief is had when the movie lets you know that it's okay to have fun with it.

The Nice Guys is a 2016 film written and directed by Shane Black, writer of such other films such as The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Lethal Weapon, and also writer-director of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. Among other things. He also made that apparently quite bad The Predator movie, but I'll admit that I haven't seen it, so I don't know how bad it really is – though you know if I haven't seen it, it's 'cause I'm avoiding it because I *know* it's bad.

The Nice Guys is an incredibly self aware pastiche of detective fiction – more specifically, it is a pastiche of Black's own brand of detective fiction dialed up to the point of full blown satire, so much so that the self referential recursion unfortunately does some damage to the film itself. It never quite fully escapes the grave of its own digging.

However, one thing the film delivers in spades is performances. Ryan Gosling steals the show as the completely bumbling fuck-up of a detective Holland March, and Russell Crowe serves full dad energy (somewhat ironically since Gosling's character is the father) as Jackson Healy. It also stars some other people, such as: character actor Keith David showing up for what has to be one of his most fun paychecks in years; Matt Bomer in an ill-fitting wig with a silly little beauty mark on his face to make him look sinister; Angourie Rice as Holly, Holland's daughter (I get it, Shane) who is apparently in those Spider-Man movies now?? Whatever, she was an up-and-coming kid actor and this role is definitely outside the wheel house for most kid actors. Val Kilmer's son Jack appears in the film as Chet, which is perhaps a fun connection to Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, as well as Robert Downey Jr. in an uncredited cameo as the dead body of porno producer Sid Shattuck who has had his face melted off or something. Everyone in this movie got the memo. Every line is delivered with a sheen of insincerity, even the heartfelt pathos. There isn't a moment where you can take anything actually fully seriously because the script is just so blatantly by-the-numbers that the dialogue needs to facilitate humor first and information second. This movie is far more of a Naked Gun than it is a Chinatown.

Perhaps I'm giving Black too much credit, but his formula is so transparent that it's impossible for me to think that any of this was an accident. What works well for Lethal Weapon is that you can sneak the humor in under an '80s movie goer's nose a little bit, and more importantly you can let Richard Donner do all the heavy lifting for the "real" parts. However, in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang things manage to maintain an earnest sense of pressing darkness despite the more obvious humor.

The Nice Guys really has to be on-purpose to even make sense as a movie. March's flagrant alcoholism culminates in Healy's falling off the wagon and not in March's vow to stop drinking as it would in probably every other version of this story. Does it work? Well, it's just a joke at the expense of screenwriterly sensibilities. It works insofar as it makes you laugh, and that seems to be all Black is going for. As a character beat itself, it's actually not so spelled out. Healy's adherence to professionalism and avoidance of alcohol is never explored and isn't much of a meaningful character trait; in other words, it's not something worth destroying either for interesting development or turning on its head to prove a point. It's a funny joke because of how decades of other movies have set us up to anticipate the drunk guy getting sober. In Lethal Weapon, Riggs' alcoholism is a consequence of his dead wife, and he never quite hits full blown sobriety but he does give up his suicide bullet. Here, March could similarly be inferred to be an alcoholic because of his dead wife, but the comparison would be if suddenly Murtagh started getting drunk at the end of Lethal Weapon. Like, it comes out of nowhere. It is funny perhaps only because of the insistence Healy has towards not drinking, but neither his drinking nor his not drinking have any intrinsic character value outside of being a foil for March. You almost don't realize you're supposed to be paying attention to him not drinking, and then when you do realize it, the pay off is a single joke at the end of the movie.

This sort of leads to the whole movie's major problem. It's unmemorable despite all the fun it's trying to have, or even the fun it successfully has. This was a rewatch. I've seen the movie once before a few years ago. I was pretty drunk, I don't really remember the details, I just remember that I watched it with my parents around Christmas time. I remembered some of the scenes where Ryan Gosling does a high pitched scream, and I remembered the burned down house reminded me of the house that blows up in Lethal Weapon, and some of the dialogue is pretty memorable. The plot is just too convoluted for anything else to stick in my brain. There's a porn star, and there's a car show, and there's collusion between the government and car manufacturers about a catalytic converter, and the proof is in a porno. It's all too stupid to follow. Who cares? (derogatory) It's obviously written with a fill-in-the-blanks kind of mentality, and then you plug the jokes in, and then the script is done. The Naked Gun comparison is apt. I couldn't tell you the plot of any of those movies, but boy do I remember the jokes.

Really. Honestly. The chemistry between Gosling and Crowe and just the fun of the dialogue is the whole point. Watch it for that – that stuff is good, I'm telling you. Might be good with a drink or two. Just don't expect to be blown away by a gripping plot or meaningful character arcs. Nobody learns anything in this movie, and honestly, that's kind of refreshing. Unfortunately, nobody learning anything doesn't seem to be done for any reason outside of making a joke; there's no deeper meta meaning here.

They made a porn where the plot mattered in a detective movie where the plot doesn't matter. Is that... anything?