The Nice Guys Shane Black

Box office

The Nice Guys grossed $36.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $25.5 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $62.8 million, against a production budget of $50 million.[5]

In the United States and Canada, the film was released alongside Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising and The Angry Birds Movie, and was projected to gross around $10 million from 2,865 theaters in its opening weekend.[32] It grossed $3.9 million on its first day, including $700,000 from Thursday night previews.[33] In its opening weekend the film grossed $11.3 million, finishing fourth at the box office behind The Angry Birds Movie ($39 million), Captain America: Civil War ($33.1 million) and Neighbors 2 ($21.8 million).[34] Phil Walden of Forbes argued that the film could have performed higher if not for sharing its release with Neighbors 2, which shared the same older demographic the film targeted.[35] The film made $6.5 million in its second weekend (including $8.4 million over the four-day Memorial Day weekend), finishing seventh.[36]

Critical response

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 91% based on 323 reviews, with an average score of 7.6/10; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "The Nice Guys hearkens back to the buddy comedies of a bygone era while adding something extra, courtesy of a knowing script, and the irresistible chemistry of its leads."[37] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 70 out of 100 based on 51 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[38] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported filmgoers gave it a 75% overall positive score and a 52% "definite recommend".[34]

Mike Ryan of Uproxx praised Black's writing and said: "If you like Shane Black, you will like The Nice Guys. It's probably the Shane Black-est of all the Shane Black movies. Black has a knack for turning action movie expectations on their head mixed with knowing and rich dialogue."[39] IGN gave the film a 9/10, writing, "Working from a tight and sharp script that perfectly balances the characters like a yin and yang of screw-ups ensures The Nice Guys is an absolute joy every step of the way."[40] Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film 3 stars out 4 and wrote: "Forget about Kevin Hart and Ice Cube in Ride Along 2, or Zac Efron and Robert De Niro in Dirty Grandpa, or Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson in Zoolander 2. Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling are the funniest duo of the year so far in The Nice Guys".[41] James Berardinelli described the film as reminiscent of Boogie Nights (1997), and wrote that "The Nice Guys is a refreshingly adult movie entering a marketplace saturated by teen-friendly superhero flicks and animated family fare. It's edgy (although not so edgy that it will turn off a mass market audience), funny, and fast-paced", giving the film a score of 3 stars out of 4.[42]

A. O. Scott of The New York Times wrote that the film lacks the wistful, slyly political sense of history found in Paul Thomas Anderson's Inherent Vice (2014), also a quirky private investigator comedy set in the 1970s. Scott wrote: "Even nostalgic nonsense requires more than attitude and energy, which is all that Mr. Black has to offer. And despite all its restless detective work, The Nice Guys is unable to track down a soul or a reason for being."[43] Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote: "That the film mostly falls flat has far more to do with the largely unconvincing material rather than with the co-stars, who are more than game for the often clownish shenanigans Black and his co-writer Anthony Bagarozzi have concocted for them; in fit and starts [sic], the actors display a buoyant comic rapport." McCarthy praised the film's production design (by Richard Bridgland) and costume design (by Kym Barrett), due to their "vivid reminders of how much L.A. has spruced itself up over the past 40 years", as well as the cinematography (by Philippe Rousselot), due to "the figurative and possibly even literal use of a smog filter to evoke a physically and morally toxic environment."[1]

Accolades