MovieChat Forums > The Nice Guys (2016) Discussion > Terrible Depiction of the 1970s

Terrible Depiction of the 1970s

posted 8 years ago by keek3205
34 replies | jump to latest

I have seen my fair share of 1970s movies that were actually made in the 1970s and this movie was way off. My biggest problem would be the way the actors spoke. They were using their 21st-century voices when in the 1970s people spoke noticeably different. The leads actors' hair was bad too. There wasn't enough bounce to it. It was too stiff. (kind of like the acting!) . This movie could have easily have taken place in 2016 aside from the wardrobe and cars. I actually forgot this movie took place in the 1970s at certain points in the movie. Specifically when I saw Kim Basinger and Russell Crowe's characters on screen. If you see an actual 1970s movie then you will notice exactly what I'm talking about.

[–] Apophos 8 years ago

I didn't realise it was the 70's until the car show said 1978.

[–] atd8vii (592) 6 years ago

It says "Los Angeles 1977" at the beginning.

[–] Lava-Rocks 7 years ago

I lived through the 70's and if this movie was not totally accurate, it was close enough.
Sometimes, we remember things differently from how they were. Hindsight etc.

[–] TheTripleA 7 years ago

Big whoop.

[–] SaliceMcD 7 years ago

Well, my 21st century voice is the same as my 70s voice was. Can you provide an example of how we "spoke different" in the 70s?

I do agree that they did *not* provide the leads or other main characters with decade-appropriate hair - nor with flared pants-legs, that I noticed. And if they'd been flared correctly for the time, you couldn't have missed them.

[–] keek3205 7 years ago

Well from what I've seen, people in the 70s weren't as loud and spoke in much softer voices. Also when that teenage girl who they were chasing spoke she sounded like a Kardashian. I think she was going for a "typical teenager voice" but she was in the wrong century. Don't tell me that throughout American history people have spoken the same. American speech has changed over time. Go listen to a Kennedy speech or watch a Vivian Leigh movie. They sound more sophisticated, softer and noticeably different. That is because they are speaking like the people of their time. Even black people! (I'm black btw) Go watch a Soul Train video that has an interview. Take note on how they are speaking. Also you probably don't realize that you sound different now than how you did in the 1970s. If you have a video of yourself from that time you should go watch and pay attention to your speech. It is not your fault how you spoke. You are just a man or woman of your time! Of course you say that your speech hasn't changed! You don't realize you are fatter until you can't get into those jeans! You can not be consciously aware of a change like that. You are too busy living your life and keeping up with the times!

[–] IvyTempleton 7 years ago

I agree.

Those who don't believe in magic will never find it -RD

[–] gcarras (2727) 6 years ago

Same here.. incentally, I've read words opnly popular MORE RECENTLY ("doggo
", like in those memes, and the word "meme" itself, started long around the 1970s, but were famous back then or for years until slowly, then in the internet age. 0

[–] PrimeMinisterOfTheSinister 7 years ago

Also you probably don't realize that you sound different now than how you did in the 1970s.

Wow, what a presumptive douchebag. If you didn't live in the 70's then you don't know how people in the 70's talked or acted so shut the hell up about it. You can't judge people of an era by *beep* movies or TV shows. Movies and TV shows aren't real. They're actors speaking through writers. I lived through some of the 70's and people talked then like they do now. Slang was different but that's about it.

[–] Daisy_Mabel (111) 7 years ago

I don't feel quite as much hostility toward the OP as this post, but I agree that OP was obviously not around int he 70s.

[–] FilmBuff (6680) 5 years ago

I'd suggest that dialogue in older movies was not written to be realistic. The goal was to write something like a play, where characters speak in grander ways than we do in real life. That changed over time, but after Pulp Fiction there was a massive shift, and scriptwriters began writing characters who speak onscreen the same way people do in real life. THAT is the big difference between this movie and the 1970s: the characters in The Nice Guys are speaking as would anyone in the '70s, but NOT the way characters spoke in movies made in the '70s.

[–] moviechatterer (13226) 4 years ago

Well from what I've seen, people in the 70s weren't as loud and spoke in much softer voices
no need for me to read any further , that sentence right there shows the rest of it is going to be inane speculation

[–] kevinswife 7 years ago

I have seen my fair share of 1970s movies that were actually made in the 1970s and this movie was way off. My biggest problem would be the way the actors spoke.

So you only know the 70's from what you've seen in movies? I was a kid in L.A. in the 70's, and apart from a few goofs, I felt like I was transported to my childhood. When my actual childhood bowling alley showed up on the screen, it felt like an out-of-body experience.

Yes, there were definitely issues--mainly, middle-class families didn't throw the f word around like that. Kids didn't curse in front of their parents, or any adult for that matter, unless they were disturbed. But overall, the feel was definitely 70's.Just a little more attention to detail would have been perfect.

[–] keek3205 7 years ago

Yes I only know the 70s from movies. I was born in 1998 and movies, music, and documentaries etc., are the only things I can go off of as far as how things were back then. It's great you found the movie nostalgic though. I love early 2000s movies because they make me feel the same way about my own childhood.

[–] FizzyGillespie 7 years ago

Wait. So you were born 20 years after this movie takes place...but you're complaining about its authenticity? That's absurd.

You have to know that's absurd.

[–] keek3205 7 years ago

You should be impressed that a person my age actually cares about authenticity and refuses to swallow what has been put before me.

[–] taijiquan12 7 years ago

I've seen other films do much worse re-enactments, with barely any clothes, music, or architecture that came close to the time period it was supposed to be. Maybe it wasn't a perfect depiction of the time period, but you'll find that nearly anything not made in the actual time period is, if you nitpick it enough.
Again, I do think there's a few things that criticizing in this are fair, like the dialouge at certain points, but to call it a "terrible" depiction is an exaggeration.

If someone who hadn't seen the start of the movie saw the cars, clothes, or the colors of the sets, I guarantee you that very few people wouldn't be able to tell it was supposed to take place sometime around then.

"Bulls**t MR.Han Man!!"--Jim Kelly in Enter the Dragon 

[–] EmmaPopell 7 years ago

YOU. MUST. SWALLOW.

[–] ignorantwordtwister 7 years ago

I'm curious which 70's movies are framing your reference.

[–] keek3205 7 years ago

I am mostly taking about blaxploitation films (Coffy, Foxy Brown), phillipino/women in prison exploitation films(The Big Bird Cage, Big Doll House) and tv interviews.

[–] Slurrysback 7 years ago

Now I think you might be joking. Those movies don't in any way represent the environment depicted in this movie. I was in high school in the 70s, and they are nothing like the world I lived in.

[–] vicky_lc2001 (1907) 7 years ago

Filipino

[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

remember when everyone was in black and white and walked really fast? those were the days!

[–] gcarras (2727) 6 years ago

My late dad even back then did, and we'd fought but we absolutely, loved each others, and we're middle class, so otherwise your reply is correct! (saw the movie and enjoyed it when it came out in theatres.)

[–] hodie1 7 years ago

Just one little thing, but the girl in the Native American headdress had arms that were way too aerobicized for the '70s. I was in my late teens/early 20s then and I thought that it looked too modern. And the story about Nixon was just weird. He resigned, wasn't "thrown out of office," (though if he hadn't resigned, he might have been removed.) It was too big and too recent an event to get wrong. Eh, I didn't buy it.

[–] torchlightlms 7 years ago

As someone who was a kid in the 1970s, I can say you are wrong. It felt very authentic.

[–] IvyTempleton 7 years ago

Gay didn't mean gay until the late 80's. So that was off. Starsky and Hutch did a better job imo. And yes I was there also.

Edit: Russel Crow saying,"Mark go; I got this" That expression is worse than "Not so much". It does not belong in the 70's.

[–] sharad-3 7 years ago

"Gay didn't mean gay until the late 80's"

That's not true at all. I remember my mother worried when I brought home my spelling list in elementary school in 1976. The word "gay" was on the list. And as we practiced spelling, she frowned and asked me if I knew what it meant. I said, "happy". And she said, "It also means something bad." Lol. I DID know what it meant as slang even as a 3rd grader, but I wasn't going to get into that with her. And she said all this with a strong Indian accent!

[–] gcarras (2727) 6 years ago

True. In fall 1975 at my park,when I was 14, near 15, an older young man and his girlfriend came by, and askedif I was gay. Now, I still thought, like sharad on the "predecessor" board,. IMDB.com, that it meant happy. Okay?

But then a few years LATER..it meant homosexual..and queer took the same route....[blah]

[–] pankoeken 7 years ago

Gay didn't mean gay until the late 80's

That is incorrect. The late 80's?!!!!! Wtf?!!!!

[–] bigdaddypathologist 7 years ago

Watch one of The Monkees' Christmas episodes from the 1960's. When they sing "Don we now our gay apparel" they mince on the word "gay." Gay had come to mean homosexual in the 1960's, at least in California.