Summary
- Gosling and Stone's chemistry sizzles onscreen, making them a legendary screen duo in any era of Hollywood history.
- Crazy, Stupid, Love showcases their comedic timing and brings them together as a comedy dream team.
- La La Land capitalizes on their onscreen chemistry, earning them Oscar nominations and solidifying the film as a classic of the era.
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? 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.
His career continued with a whole slew of interesting choices, garnering an Oscar nomination in 2007 for Half Nelson. That was the same year Emma Stone debuted in the iconic comedy Superbad. 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 love working together and are already a legendary screen duo. The timeless, movie-star quality of both performers has made them ineffably watchable on their own but dynamite when combined.
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3 Gangster Squad (2013)
Even In A Critical Misfire, Their Chemistry Stands Out
Gangster Squad begins strong enough, with 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. They're the actors with the most ease in the film, 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. Even with those performances, the film flopped with critics.
2 Crazy, Stupid, Love. (2011)
Gosling & Stone Make For A Comedy Dream Team
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 brings together an endearing story with a hilarious and memorable final act. However, there is a subplot about a young boy in love with his babysitter which 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.
Again though, the Stone and Gosling duo is gold. Gosling gives one of his best performances 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 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 worth the price of admission alone. The film has also gone down as one of the best rom-coms of the 2010s.
1 La La Land (2016)
An Oscar-Winning Classic
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 Oscar-winner Damien Chazelle with a majestic score by Justin Hurwitz that combines classic jazz with the sweep of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone excel as the leads of an Old Hollywood screwball comedy romance, which is where this film (and these performances) hit its stride.
This 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. 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 are fun, their singing is sweet, and their chemistry is undeniable. This film earned each an Oscar nomination, with Stone winning for her role as Mia, and is widely considered a true classic of the era.
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 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. Each has nothing but praise to offer for the other. Stone has repeatedly said that 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.
