The Nice Guys: 10 Reasons It's The Most Overrated Film Of The Year

Before I deride the fact that there's a 14-year-old girl caught up in the events of this movie, I'd like to state that 15-year-old Angourie Rice, who plays Holly March, daughter to Ryan Gosling's Holland March, is a revelation: she's brilliant in the film, and I'm sure that her turn here will lead to great things.

That said, I have a real distain for the "precocious teenager" character that Hollywood movies tend to encompass now and again in an attempt to spice things up, and though Holly doesn't register all that highly on the "Annoying Movie Precocious Teenager Scale," the inclusion of this character is still questionable.

Why is there a 14-year-old girl in this movie, after all? It gives the movie such a strange, unfocused feel - like Black started out writing a family comedy and slowly morphed it into a violent thriller, blending the genres at the seams; Nancy Drew meets Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, if you will.

Rice is still fantastic, and the fault doesn't lie with her: it just makes no sense to have this character in amongst all the sex and violence for so much of the film's runtime, especially when all the work that Black puts into her character doesn't lead to any notable payoff of any sort. It's very strange.