July 2016 4 9
'T
he Nice Guys' is a charmingly funny,
buddy-comedy detective-thriller, writ-
ten by Shane Black, of 'Lethal Weapon'
fame. It stars Ryan Gosling, Russell Crowe and
Kim Basinger.
The narrative is purposefully familiar: in 1977,
Los Angeles, down-on-his-luck PI (Gosling’s
pretty Holland March) and an enforcer for hire
(Crowe’s grizzly Jackson Healy) find themselves
working on opposing sides of an investigation
involving a missing girl until, as the case goes
on, they discover that they will need to work
together, if it is to be solved.
'The Nice Guys' is Shane Black’s return to
comedy after a short foray into the superhero
genre ('Iron Man 3', 2013). 'The Nice Guys' is a
bubbling admixture of styles, pulling, and bal-
ancing, influences from the likes of 'Boogie
Nights' (PT Anderson, 1997), 'Chinatown'
(Roman Polanski, 1974) and 'Lethal Weapon'
(Richard Donner, 1987). Withal, it contrives to be
both diverse and tonally consistent from begin-
ning to end, despite its unconventional embrace
of scenes involving a large talking bee and a
ghostly former American president.
Black’s blackish humour dominates, though
perhaps he has attenuated the acerbity lately.
Gosling reaches for, and finds, the comic timing
and acting range that drove Academy Award
winner 'The Big Short'. The homespun chemistry
between the main characters is at times
electrifying.
The film’s dialogue is realist and punchy - as
where our heroes in an effort to coax informa-
tion from a hotel-bar witness debate everything
from contacting the police to eunuch existential-
ism, reminiscent of Tarantino’s earlier work
('Reservoir Dogs' and 'Jackie Brown'). The script
indeed more Tarantino than Tarantino himself,
these days.
Sadly, 'The Nice Guys' won’t necessarily make
money. The movie is floundering at the box
office despite scoring a 91% critics’ rating on
online review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes,
no trivial arbiter.
So how can such a critical success fail so
badly financially? Because critics don’t really
matter. Budget is the biggest predictor. For a
start an extra 10 percentage points on Rotten
Tomatoes critics’ score is worth only $1m in
extra box-office takings. Between 2006 and
2016 it averaged four times that. Admittedly a
ten percentage point improvement in audience
– not critics’ – reviews now generates $11.5m
but it’s still not that significant as a force for
profitability. 'The Nice Guys' merited 82% in
audience review ratings but it hasn’t been
enough, or much.
A good point of comparison with 'The Nice
Guys' is the egregious 'Neighbors 2 (Sorority
Rising)', a Seth Rogen comedy film released on
the same day (Rotten Tomatoes scores: 52%
Critics; 62% Audience). One scathing review
castigated: “we have seen all the jokes before
and there’s nothing really that shocks or makes
you laugh out loud”: but remember it doesn’t
really matter.
'The Nice Guys' has struggled to barely pull a
profit, but in contrast 'Neighbors 2' (called 'Bad
Neighbours' in Europe) has almost tripled its
budget in box-office revenue. Both movies were
released at the same time – summer releases
earn an average $15m more than others - and
draw from the same broad comedy genre. So
what is the major difference between the two
films? One is a stand-alone film, not based on a
popular pre-established franchise and the other
a sequel to a recently released, commercially
successful film.
This of course echoes what Hollywood indus-
try analysts have been pointing out for years,
that – against a background where one in three
movies is making less than half its production
cost back - low-quality, cash-cow sequels and
superhero movies, are killing off new, and in
many cases, more creative, films.
Studios are less inclined to produce a wide-
release film based on an original idea, says
Lynda Obst, author of 'Sleepless in Hollywood',
a book which explores the industry’s sequel
mania
Although in 1983 screenwriter William Gold-
man declared that in Hollywood “nobody knows
anything”, a little is clear: the pulling power of
Hollywood star actors is on the wane (except
apparently in the burgeoning Chinese market),
the $20m lead is rare and the voguish sureshot
for Hollywood in 2016 is the franchise movie: the
likes of 'Captain America', 'Jurassic Park', 'James
Bond', 'Star Wars' or 'Fast and Furious'.
These films now account for one in five of the
major studios' outputs, up from one in twelve 20
years ago. 14 of them earned more than $500m
last year, up from five in 2006. Their average
production cost in 2014 was $150-200m. Accord-
ing to the Economist magazine:
“All other things being equal, sequels earn
$35m more than non-sequels at the box office.
Franchise films increasingly depend on super-
hero characters. Hollywood made just eight
superhero films between 1996 and 2000, but 19
in the last five years. A $200m-budget super-
hero film will earn $58m more at the box office
than a non-superhero film of the same budget.
Superhero films tend to be child-friendly, for
good reason: films that receive an “R”
(restricted) certificate typically earn $16m less
in cinemas”.
An interesting point of speculation is whether
this phenomenon is an inevitable stage of a cap-
italist industry (little input, large output), which
must be accepted, or if it is a fad which will pass.
'Neighbors 2' is an easily marketed sequel,
which by all accounts, reprises the same for
-
mula as the original. Avoid.
Nice Guys
finish last
Hollywood backs sequels
and superheroes
by Brian Lenihan and Michael Smith
MOVIES
Source: imdb.com
'Sing Street' and 'The Nice Guys' didn't make it

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