Ryan Gosling has always been fun­ny, it’s just tak­en every­one a while to notice

If com­e­dy is about tim­ing, then Ryan Gosling has left it pret­ty late. After a three-year absence from our screens (‘Ryan Gosling won’t eat his cere­al’ doesn’t count), the sto­ic star of Dri­ve and Only God For­gives has emerged reen­er­gised, sil­li­er and with his sights set on screw­ball. He’s col­lab­o­rat­ed with Adam McK­ay on The Big Short, but it turns out his Jen­ga eco­nom­ics was mere­ly a set-up for an even big­ger pay­off: the Goz can tell a joke.

In The Nice Guys, Gosling is the real slap­stick deal as Hol­land March, a bum­bling detec­tive of the Shane Black vari­ety – which is to say he’s quick-wit­ted, foul-mouthed and the king of prat­falls. A stand­out scene sees him ren­dered speech­less upon dis­cov­er­ing a corpse, his facial expres­sions turn­ing pos­i­tive­ly Looney Tunes. Even sim­ple ges­tures like swal­low­ing too many mints are a hoot. And he’s dyna­mite with quips, spit­ting out punch­lines like his mouth is on fire.

Gosling is such a nat­ur­al clown, you have to remind your­self that this is the same guy who forged a rep­u­ta­tion as a brood­ing hunk. In a 2011 inter­view Gosling admit­ted, ​“Come­dies have always been my favourite movies and I always want­ed to make them but then I got into dra­ma and nev­er had the chance.” His ear­ly cred­its estab­lished a pat­tern of cold killers (Mur­der by Num­bers, The Unit­ed States of Leland), psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly dam­aged out­siders (The Slaugh­ter Rule, Stay) and even a neo-Nazi (The Believer).

He sim­ply wasn’t required to be fun­ny, except for in Lars and the Real Girl, although when you think about it that real­ly qual­i­fies as a straight-man part. In Half Nel­son, when he attempts a knock knock joke, he fum­bles the deliv­ery and a kid retorts, ​“That was hor­ri­ble.” Lat­er, Blue Valentine’s tears washed away the sug­ary taste of The Note­book; Dri­ve allowed him to switch gear and ramp up his intense per­sona; and The Place Beyond the Pines lit­er­al­ly tat­tooed a teardrop on his face. In hind­sight, Only God For­gives was the inevitable break­ing point.

Over­ex­posed and in dan­ger of burn­ing out, it’s no won­der Gosling decid­ed to take a break from act­ing. Accord­ing to the leaked Sony emails, Gosling had lunch with Amy Pas­cal in 2014 to dis­cuss a com­e­dy makeover, includ­ing a pos­si­ble part in Ghost­busters. A turn in the director’s chair pre­sent­ed him with a new chal­lenge, but Lost Riv­er wasn’t the solu­tion he was look­ing for. With The Nice Guys already lined up, the only thing for it was to take a self-imposed hiatus.

Now, with Black’s film final­ly arriv­ing in cin­e­mas, Gosling seems gen­uine­ly thrilled at the prospect of audi­ences dis­cov­er­ing his lighter side. Between tweet­ing ado­ra­tion for Broad City and host­ing SNL, it appears he’s intent on rewrit­ing his own inter­net his­to­ry and tak­ing own­er­ship of the memes. What’s more, he’s fol­low­ing up The Nice Guys with a Damien Chazelle direct­ed musi­cal, La La Land. For the time being at least, it looks like we can expect to see a lot more com­e­dy gold from Gosling.