All 10 Ryan Gosling Movies That Are “Rotten” On Rotten Tomatoes & Why

Throughout his nearly three-decade-long career, Ryan Gosling has starred in a ton of movies, ten of which have been deemed “Rotten” on Rotten Tomatoes. The Canadian-born actor got his start in the industry at 12 years old as a Mouseketeer on Disney Channel’s revival of The Mickey Mouse Club House in 1993. Three years later, he made his film debut in Frankenstein and Me at the age of 16, followed by his breakout role in 2001’s The Believer.

Since then, Gosling has made a name for himself as an in-demand talent with a wide range by starring in some incredible films, such as Drive, La La Land, and Blade Runner 2049. Most recently, Gosling made a huge impression starring opposite Margot Robbie as the lead Ken in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. However, not every Ryan Gosling movie has been a hit with critics. Most of his “Rotten” movies feature Gosling in his most forgotten roles, but a couple of his most popular movies even failed to score “Certified Fresh” on the Tomatometer.

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10 Murder by Numbers

Director: Barbet Schroeder

As far as Rotten Tomatoes is concerned, Gosling’s film career got off to a decent start critically. Some of his earliest movies as a teenager do not have scores on the Tomatometer, but a handful have been deemed “Fresh” by critics on the platform. Gosling’s first “Rotten” movie on Rotten Tomatoes wasn’t until 2002’s Murder by Numbers, a psychological crime thriller loosely based on the true story of the Leopold and Loeb case.

Gosling plays rich, popular high school senior, Richard Haywood, who teams up with his classmate, Justin Pendleton (Michael Pitt), to carry out a series of murders in an attempt to commit the “perfect” crime. Also starring Sandra Bullock and Ben Chaplin as the homicide detectives assigned to the boys’ case, Murder by Numbers holds a 30% critics score on the Tomatometer. Critics praised Gosling and Pitt as charismatic, talented young performers whose potential was wasted in a basic and “predictable” police procedural with a weak script.

9 The United States of Leland

Director: Matthew Ryan Hoge

Murder by Numbers kicked off an unfortunate streak in Gosling’s career, as his next “Rotten” film, The United States of Leland, was the following year. Gosling stars as the eponymous Leland P. Fitzgerald, a quiet and reserved teenager incarcerated for the horrific and senseless murder of a disabled boy. As both Leland’s and the victim’s families cope with the tragedy, opportunist writer Pearl Madison (Don Cheadle), Leland’s teacher in juvie who intends to write a book about the case, gets close to the troubled teen as he tries to understand Leland’s motive to kill.

Though it holds a fairly high audience score of 81%, proving it was watchable, The United States of Leland is “Rotten” on the Tomatometer with a 34% critics score. Gosling’s dramatic efforts were acknowledged by critics, but ultimately, many felt that the character was a victim of writing clichés that even a “gifted” actor like Gosling couldn’t entirely pull off. The story was also said to be uneven and “muddled,” and the unbalanced performances were distracting as some of the cast failed to deliver performances on the same level as others.

8 The Notebook

Director: Nick Cassavetes

Gosling’s “Rotten” streak continued into 2004 with the film that launched him into stardom, The Notebook. Based on Nicholas Sparks’ romance novel by the same name, The Notebook tells the love story-within-a-love-story of Noah Calhoun (Gosling) and Allie Hamilton (Rachel McAdams), two young lovers in the 1940s from different socioeconomic backgrounds. After years of separation, the couple finds their way back to each other and their love stands the test of time as a much older Allie suffers from dementia.

The Notebook became one of Ryan Gosling’s most iconic roles ever and is arguably the quintessential romantic drama of the 21st century. Of Gosling’s “Rotten” nondocumentary films, The Notebook is the highest rated by critics, with a score of 54% on the Tomatometer. The Notebook also has a relatively high audience score of 85%, which makes sense given its mainstream popularity. However, critics were still not fond of certain aspects of the film upon its release, noting that its earnest sentimentality could be hard to stomach, and it was often overwhelmed by melodramatic clichés.

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7 Stay

Director: Marc Forster

The longest “Rotten” streak of Gosling’s career was capped off with 2005’s Stay, his fourth consecutive “Rotten” film since 2002. Stay follows Dr. Sam Foster (Ewan McGregor), a psychiatrist who loses his grip on reality as he tries to prevent the meticulously planned suicide of his recently acquired patient, Henry Latham (Gosling), who also has trouble distinguishing between the real and not-real. Stay has the dishonor of holding the lowest critical score of all ten of Gosling’s “Rotten” movies, with a measly 26% critics score on the Tomatometer.

Stay‘s critics score seems exceptionally low, given its “Fresh” audience score of 69%. Ultimately, critics were confused by the film’s “incoherent” plot and eye-rolling attempts at depth and insight. Despite its cast full of capable actors, the characters never felt fully formed, and the performances lacked a center. Stay just didn’t contain enough substance to justify its mind-bending premise.

6 All Good Things

Director: Andrew Jarecki

After starring in one “Rotten” movie per year from 2002-2005, Gosling managed to stay “Fresh” for the rest of the decade. From 2006-2007, Gosling starred in three films that all hold scores above 70% on the Tomatometer: Half-Nelson, Fracture, and Lars and the Real Girl. He took a hiatus from 2008-2009, but sadly, Gosling’s return to the big screen in 2010’s All Good Things was not great. Framed around a criminal trial, All Good Things is a murder mystery thriller about real estate heir, David Marks (Gosling), who is suspected of killing his wife (Kirsten Dunst) after her sudden disappearance.

All Good Things is based on the life of real estate mogul and murderer Robert Durst, who was still alive and had yet to be convicted of his suspected crimes when the film was made. Critics gave the cast props for their solid performances, but the vast potential of the true story source material was left untapped in All Good Things. As such, All Good Things holds a critics score of 35% on the Tomatometer. Ultimately, they were underwhelmed by the final product given how good it could have been.

5 Gangster Squad

Director: Ruben Fleischer

2010-2012 turned out to be a super busy time for Gosling: despite the poorly received All Good Things souring Gosling’s return to acting in 2010, he also starred in Blue Valentine and narrated the documentary, ReGeneration, that same year, both of which are “Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes. His career began mirroring his ’06-’07 “Fresh” run as Gosling starred in some of his catalog’s heavy hitters, one after the other: Crazy, Stupid, Love., Drive, and The Ides of March in 2011, followed by The Place Beyond the Pines in 2012.

Unfortunately, after these back-to-back cinematic hits, things started to go downhill again for Gosling in 2013. Gosling’s first “Rotten” film of the year was the action thriller Gangster Squad, which saw him reunite with his Crazy, Stupid, Love. co-star, Emma Stone. The pair played onscreen lovers once again in this action thriller about corrupt and crime-ridden 1940s Los Angeles run by mobster Mickey Cohen (Sean Penn). Gosling’s Sergeant Jerry Wooters is a laidback World War II vet and one of the cops led by Sergeant John O’Mara (Josh Brolin) to take down the crime boss.

In the end, Gangster Squad‘s star-studded cast couldn’t save it from falling flat with critics. Gangster Squad holds a 31% critics score on the Tomatometer aggregated from a high count of 206 reviews. Though it was visually and stylistically impressive, Gangster Squad was called out for its excessive violence even for the crime-action genre, which the film bordered on spoofing at certain points. Between the “lackluster” script and so-so performances, critics were disappointed in the once-promising Gangster Squad.

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4 Only God Forgives

Director: Nicolas Winding Refn

2013 turned out to be Gosling’s worst year for film, as it marked the first and only time in his career in which he starred in more than one “Rotten” movie in the same year. Gosling reunited with Drive director, Nicolas Winding Refn, for Only God Forgives, in which Gosling plays Julian Thompson, a boxing club owner and drug dealer part of Bangkok’s criminal underworld. After his despicable brother, Billy (Tom Burke), is killed as revenge for murdering an underaged girl forced into prostitution, Julian is ordered to avenge his brother’s death by their powerful, icy mother (Kristin Scott Thomas).

A major fall from grace after Drive’s critical success (which remains Gosling’s highest-rated movie by critics on Rotten Tomatoes), Only God Forgives holds a 41% critics score on the Tomatometer. The film was praised for its stunning visuals including Refn’s signature neon-drenched style, but the actor-director duo wasn’t able to impress critics quite the same way this time around. The core story of Only God Forgives felt largely untold and underdeveloped, and Gosling failed to deliver a performance that reached beyond the surface.

3 My Life Directed By Nicolas Winding Refn

Director: Liv Corfixen

As if Only God Forgives’ poor critical reception wasn’t bad enough, Refn’s wife Liv Corfixen’s documentary about the making of the film was deemed “Rotten” on the Tomatometer, too. My Life Directed By Nicolas Winding Refn follows Refn during the shooting of Only God Forgives in Bangkok. Gosling appears as himself in the documentary released in 2014, the same year Gosling made his directorial debut with the “Rotten” Lost River, which has a 29% critics score on the Tomatometer.

Though still “Rotten,” My Life Directed By Nicolas Winding‘s 58% score on the Tomatometer is only 2% away from “Fresh” status, giving it the highest critics score of all ten “Rotten” films starring Gosling on Rotten Tomatoes. It also holds an average critical rating of 6.3/10, meaning that among its 24 reviews, more critics rated it “Fresh” than “Rotten.” For critics who deemed it “Rotten,” the documentary didn’t offer much beyond a superficial inside glimpse as it failed to scratch beneath the surface of Refn’s creative process.

2 Song to Song

Director: Terrence Malick

After both of his 2013 movies, the documentary about the director of one of those movies, and his directorial debut flopped, Gosling managed to turn things around by starring in some of the best films of his career from 2015-2016. He reunited with his Crazy, Stupid, Love. co-stars and frequent collaborators, Steve Carell and Stone, for 2015’s The Big Short and the 2016 Oscar-winning musical, La La Land, respectively. Gosling also played the lead in Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 in 2017, which was also the year of Gosling’s return to “Rotten” movies with Terrence Malick’s Song to Song.

Set against the music scene in Austin, Texas, Song to Song follows two unfaithful couples who try to keep their intertwining love triangles a secret from each other. Gosling plays songwriter and musician BV in Song to Song, which holds a 43% critics score on the Tomatometer. Critics felt that despite Malick’s praiseworthy work in the past, more needed to be done to connect the dots of the narrative as Song to Song lacked anything tangible for the viewer to fully grasp.

1 The Gray Man

Directors: Joe & Anthony Russo

Gosling’s longest “Fresh” streak of his career is largely owed to the few films he starred in during the late 2010s-early 2020s. After Song to Song in 2017, Gosling played astronaut Neil Armstrong in the “Certified Fresh” First Man in 2018 before taking a four-year break from movies. Just like his return in 2010 from his first hiatus, though, Gosling’s return in The Russo Brothers’ Netflix film The Gray Man in 2022 was not much cause for celebration.

Although it was a highly anticipated film,​​​​​​​ The Gray Man fell short of critics’ expectations. Aggregated from a high total of 272 reviews, The Gray Man holds a 44% score on the Tomatometer. Critics felt that the action thriller was “mediocre” and had essentially been done before many times over, only much better. Despite its less-than-savory critical reception, The Gray Man holds the highest audience score of Ryan Gosling‘s “Rotten” movies with an impressive 90%.