Happened to read this today.
http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/some-ryan-gosling-movies-that-people-like-actually-are-1790568346
La La Land is not good. Actually it’s bad. It’s going to win a bunch of Oscars because it has Ryan Gosling in it, and Ryan Gosling is a handsome man who is understood to choose good roles in ambitious awards-y movies, and then to not make many facial expressions in those movies, in a style of acting that we are meant to understand is “understated,” for which you’re then meant to signal your appreciation as a way of indicating refined appreciation for refined things. I am fed up with this! It’s time for some Ryan Gosling Truth.
He dances and sings in La La Land—not well, mind you, but you’re supposed to think that’s actually what’s good about it, because it’s vulnerable or relatable or whatever. Actually it’s just crappy!
Have not seen it so can’t agree or disagree. However I do think this Drive take is silly.
In Drive, Ryan Gosling drives around a bunch, and wears driving gloves like a weirdo. These are fine behaviors for the protagonist of an unexceptional cheeseball B-movie—which is what Drive is—but because Ryan Gosling does no actual acting in Drive, but rather spends the entire time making an Easter Island statue face, you are supposed to understand that his performance is restrained, and therefore suggestive of hidden depths of meaning, and therefore that this dumb action movie in which Ryan Gosling drives around wearing driving gloves is Art. No way, dammit! No goddamn way!
I totally disagree with that. I really like Drive. Gosling is meant to be a creepy unemotional weirdo, and to say he doesn’t act is absurd. He isn’t totally emotionless, either, he very clearly cares for Irene and Benicio. And Drive is in no way a “dumb action movie”, there’s hardly any action at all.