Vue Thurrock: The Nice Guys

This weeks big release is cop buddy movie from the writer of the Lethal Weapon films, its stars Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling the former being the straight man.
Essentially its a buddy movie clique cut and pasted from the mid 70s early 80s films that was done to death back then but clearly the time is ripe to reintroduce the formula – this time they've done it with a 1970s cheesy look that worked so well with American Hustle - a sort "Car Wash Disco" look of cheesiness that helps remind us that this film is essentially merely trying to be fun first and foremost. The story revolved around cop (Crowe) and Private investigator (Gosling) who through various plot contrivances are thrown together as the odd couple looking for a missing girl (the daughter of the DA – played by Kim Basinger) and this takes them though a number of set pieces that while not always making sense, is very funny to watch. The gags are both visual and verbal and invariably delivered with impeccable timing, One is actually reminded of how good and how much the Lethal Weapon films were to watch all those years ago. What's also surprising is how funny Russell Crowe is, he made his name doing serious drama and his one foray into comedy previous (A Good Year) was not all that hilarious.
The first act is pretty confusing and you will be left wondering if the edit hasn't left out 15 crucial minutes somewhere, but hang in there because once it gets moving it makes you laugh in the right moments, it goes bang and crash at about the right rate and by the time you leave the cinema you will feel you had a pretty good time.
The door is clearly left open for a franchise to start and based on the evidence of this one it would be a franchise that cinema could well need right now as more and more films are an inadequate mix of over marketed hype and CGI to keep the punters coming in. Here is a genuine reason to go to the cinema.