Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling have shared the screen together in three films, but how do the Ryan Gosling/Emma Stone movies rank from worst to best? Each screen darlings in their own way, the actors first collaborated in the 2011 rom-com Crazy, Stupid, Love. The effect was palpable, culminating (at least so far) with the 2016 Oscar juggernaut La La Land. Their chemistry has been noted by many of their collaborators, with Stone telling E! News that she couldn’t “even imagine what my life would be without Ryan.”
Gosling leapt onto the scene in a smaller role in 2000’s Remember the Titans, but stormed his way into the public’s hearts in the 2004 romance The Notebook. Starring alongside Eurovision movie lead Rachel McAdams, his dreamy turn cemented him as one of America’s sexiest movie stars. His career continued with a whole slew of interesting choices, garnering an Oscar nomination in 2007 for Half Nelson. Interestingly enough, that was the same year Emma Stone debuted in the iconic comedy Superbad, cementing herself as one of the most magnetic “girls next door” in modern cinema. Her continued presence in studio comedies led her inextricably to Gosling in Crazy, Stupid, Love, where their sizzling chemistry led directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa to note, in ET, that they “get on like a house on fire.”
Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone’s onscreen rapport has invited comparisons to legendary screen duos like movie star Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, or Grant and Rosalind Russell. The timeless, movie-star quality of both performers has made them ineffably watchable on their own but dynamite when combined. Here’s how the Ryan Gosling/Emma Stone film collaborations compare to one another.
3. Gangster Squad (2013)
This cartoony noir from Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer had its release date pushed back after concerns that some of its more violent passages would be too disturbing in the wake of the Aurora shootings of 2012. When faced with the goofy, plastic-feeling aesthetic of this film’s action sequences, the concern seems unnecessary. Indeed, Gangster Squad begins strong enough, with Thanos and Cable actor Josh Brolin heading a crew of LAPD detectives cracking down on Sean Penn’s Mickey Cohen. Penn spends most of the movie trying to push through his excessive makeup with a genuinely intriguing, hard-boiled performance. Meanwhile, Fleischer himself can’t seem to make up his mind whether he wants to craft an old-fashioned gangster flick or spend two hours spoofing the genre. Around the middle of the movie, he all but throws his hands up in defeat, devolving the proceedings into an uber-violent sub-par action movie.
The highlights in the otherwise disappointing Gangster Squad, other than Penn’s scene-stealing performance, are undoubtedly Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, whose meeting at a nightclub calls to mind legendary screen duos like Hepburn and Tracy. Stone, iconic in a red dress, plays Penn’s doomed but steely “etiquette teacher” Grace Faraday, and Gosling is the smooth-talking cop Jerry Wooters. Without a doubt, they’re the actors with the most ease in this bloated genre exercise, and their chemistry sizzles right off the screen. Watching them, the viewer gets the sense that these two would be movie stars in any decade of Hollywood history. Alas, they’re ultimately at the mercy of a flat script and tonally confused direction that renders their efforts all but moot.
2. Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011)
Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone’s first collaboration was in the cloyingly cutesy romantic comedy from 2011, Crazy, Stupid, Love. Featuring a sprawling ensemble cast, the script by Dan Fogelman mashes up the “middle-aged man trying to hook up with as many women as he can” vibes of The 40-Year-Old-Virgin (Steve Carell also stars) with the “pickup artist mentors man on his game” plot of Hitch. The results are mixed, if inoffensive. It’s not as cavity-inducing as Love, Actually, although a final act, which attempts to tie together the film’s disparate plot strands, is largely disappointing. Similarly, a subplot about a young boy in love with his babysitter is an exercise in creepiness, leading up to a finale that seems to endorse the boy’s stalker-hood as an admirable pursuit of love.
All this to say that if the film had instead just focused on Gosling’s pick-up artist character and Stone’s law-school grad, things would’ve wound up far better. Gosling, so good in films as varied as Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 and The Big Short, gives one of his best charm offensives in Crazy, Stupid Love, and Stone’s winning combination of plucky nerdiness that gives way to accessible lovestruck wildness is near a career-best. A scene where she cheekily commands Gosling to remove his shirt, only to explode in ecstatic glee at the sight of his abs, is as funny and sexy a moment as has ever graced the rom-com genre. Of course, their reenactment of the Dirty Dancing lift is the film’s iconic set piece and is arguably worth the price of admission alone.
1. La La Land (2016)
Naturally, it can be hard to separate La La Land from the Best Picture flub of 2016, but removed from the hype, it’s actually a fairly modest little movie. The entire gimmick of this Hollywood throwback musical is that it is a Hollywood throwback musical. It’s in CinemaScope, everything looks Technicolor, and most of the numbers are filmed head-to-toe in one shot. It’s technically proficient work by the clearly talented Damien Chazelle, but despite a majestic score by Justin Hurwitz, which combines classic jazz with the sweep of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, the film rarely manages to match the swoony transcendence of its progenitors like Top Hat or Singin’ in the Rain. A lot of that has to do with the fact that, framed as they are a la Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers, The Gray Man star Ryan Gosling’s too-cool-for-school hoofing and Emma Stone’s whispery vocals never manage to justify their casting in a musical.
Where Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone excel, however, is as the leads of an Old Hollywood screwball comedy romance, which is funnily enough where this film (and these performances) hit its stride. As one can tell from the casting of Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie in Chazelle’s upcoming Babylon, the writer-director loves his movie stars. And if it’s movie stars a director wants, they need look no further than Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, especially when the two are paired together. It’s been stated above that Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone are the Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy of the modern era, and part of the genius of La La Land is its capitalization on that fact. Their dance steps may falter, their singing may leave something to be desired, but their chemistry is undeniable. Fittingly enough, this is the only of the duo’s collaborations to net them both Oscar nominations, with Stone winning for her role as Mia. It’s hard to deny. Hurwitz’s masterful score aside, their performances are the closest the film gets to reaching its throwback aspirations.
Why Ryan Gosling And Emma Stone Have Such Good Chemistry
As with so many classic Hollywood pairings, or even comparatively modern ones like Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone work so well together onscreen because they are also good friends offscreen. Their first outing together in Crazy, Stupid Love afforded them a great opportunity to improvise alongside one another, in what is arguably one of the film’s best scenes. During an intimate evening encounter between Stone’s Hannah and Gosling’s Jacob, the pair alternate between confessing their strange interests and hobbies, gleeful physical attraction to each other, and genuine emotional connection. Crazy, Stupid Love writer Dan Fogelman has admitted that, at the time, he found the improvised scene ridiculous and figured it would never make the final cut, but he came to agree with nearly anyone who’s seen the film since: Stone and Gosling have such perfect chemistry that the scene sings.
Ryan Gosling’s Sad Ken Tease Is Perfect For Barbie
That first collaboration paved the way for Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone’s ongoing close friendship, and each of them has nothing but praise to offer for the other. Emma Stone has repeatedly said that Ryan Gosling is one of her favorite people to work with and that she can’t imagine life without him, while Gosling has complimented Stone’s humor and talent on numerous occasions. Given how many other actors, not to mention directors, writers, producers, and more that both movie stars have worked with over the years, it’s impressive that Gosling and Stone have found such a lasting and genuine connection with each other. With any luck, the future will hold even more Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone movies that show off their uncommon chemistry.
