Classic Shane Black: two-thirds great, and one-third deliberately alienating nihilistic """ironic""" comedy which is also arguably pretty good, but makes me hate myself for laughing. Crowe’s on autopilot playing a man on autopilot, which works but doesn’t exactly raise the pulse; Gosling does a mean Lou Costello (in both senses of the phrase) on the way to proving, yet again, that he is a brilliant character actor with leading man looks. The Nice Guys is a collage of shaggy-dog stories about screwing the pooch, a cult film assembled from other cult films (if not literally from Danny Peary’s Cult Movies); neither the film, nor its commercial disappointment, nor its rapturous fan base are anything other than what you’d expect.