From esteemed astronauts to brooding jazz pianists, Ryan Gosling nails every part he plays, and from the colorful content we have seen so far, his upcoming role in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is looking to be no exception. Gosling has consistently proven that he can do it all, but perhaps his most endearing portrayal is as the unexpectedly earnest himbo Jacob Palmer in Crazy, Stupid, Love. While we wait for the delightfully plastic and surely fantastic Barbie, we can appreciate how Ryan Gosling so artfully walks the line between hilarity and sincerity, and how he might be at his best playing guys with shiny plastic exteriors and hidden hearts of gold.

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Ryan Gosling’s Ken Is a Textbook Himbo in ‘Barbie’

Ryan Gosling in Barbie (2023)
Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

Now, a himbo, by definition, is an attractive but unintelligent man. It's not a dig, either. Everybody loves a himbo, and we appreciate them in all their hilarious and handsome glory. While we don’t know much about him yet, it’s pretty clear from the latest Barbie trailer that Gosling’s Ken definitely fits the bill. Ken is a beautiful, rollerblading beach rat that appears to have no thoughts behind his twinkling eyes. He's perfectly sculpted and insanely tanned, and his delicate doll hands don’t have the firmest grasp on the English language. (He’ll beach you off, man!) Crazy, Stupid, Love’s Jacob, on the other hand, is a little bit harder to categorize. With his impeccable smooth-talking skills and his ability to navigate a mall, you might think he’s too clever to fit the himbo mold. However, if Ken is the textbook example of a himbo, Jacob is at least a pamphlet.

At the start of Crazy, Stupid, Love, Jacob only cares about two things: fashion and getting laid. He saunters onto the scene with the shiniest of shoes and the tightest of pants, hitting on beautiful women and having no doubt that they’ll be honored to go home with him. And, to be fair, he's usually right. He demonstrates the model good looks and vapid nature that is necessary for the himbo archetype, and early on in the movie, the audience has no reason to believe there’s anything more than meets the eye. Jacob takes the newly-separated, vodka-cran-loving Cal (Steve Carell) under his wing and teaches him to pick up women and dress to impress, presenting himself as a suave but superficial airhead with nothing to offer other than his looks and his money. We soon learn, however, that there’s much more to Jacob than his disdain for New Balance sneakers and velcro wallets.

Emma Stone Unearths a Deeper Side of Ryan Gosling in ‘Crazy, Stupid, Love’

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Image via Warner Bros. Pictures

Enter Emma Stone as Hannah, a down-to-earth lawyer-to-be who’s unfazed by Jacob’s womanizer ways. She initially rejects his persistent advances, but after a particularly bad night, she winds up impulsively going to his place for a night of crazy, stupid, love-making. What Hannah doesn’t expect from her evening with Jacob is to fall for a tender, goofy, Coin Bear collector who would rather stay up all night buying infomercial junk than sit alone with his thoughts of loneliness and inadequacy. As the night progresses, Hannah and Jacob continue to confide in each other, and we learn about how Jacob came to be the seemingly callous Casanova we met at the start of the film.

Jacob reveals that he had a withholding mother and a kindhearted father who succeeded in business but died too young, leaving Jacob with lots of money but also a mild identity crisis. We can see how Jacob fears letting his guard down because he spent his childhood watching his mother perceive his father’s sensitivity as a weakness. When he notices the lonely Cal sitting alone at the bar, he sees another man plagued by a gentle heart and opts to turn him into a fellow Lothario. Rather than be open about his insecurities, Jacob protects himself by focusing solely on style and sex and tries to do the same for Cal.

In ‘Crazy, Stupid, Love’ and ‘Barbie,’ Ryan Gosling’s Characters Might Be More Sophisticated Than They Look

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Image via Warner Bros. Pictures 

As Crazy, Stupid, Love goes on, Jacob continues to grow his relationship with Hannah, even after he learns that she’s Cal’s daughter. Carell's Cal temporarily devolves into the aimless womanizer while Jacob takes on the role of the loyal family man, ironically in Cal's family. Jacob's genuine connection with Hannah teaches him how to communicate his feelings effectively, and he learns that there's way more to intimacy than just sex. He continues to grow and proves himself to be kind and honest particularly through his loyalty to both Hannah and Cal, even though being the middle-man in this awkward family sandwich puts him in a difficult position. When everybody finally reconciles at the end of the movie, we get to see Jacob in his true form as a complicated, gentle, and ultimately good man. He can be the guy that plays with kids and also picks the cheese off his pizza, and who makes a perfect Old Fashioned while also doing the puzzles on the back of a cereal box. Jacob disproves his theory that one might be too attractive to be interesting, and shows that you can be perfectly groomed and delightfully silly at the same time.

If Crazy, Stupid, Love teaches us anything, it’s that even after a lifetime together, people can still surprise you. Ryan Gosling’s character Jacob is no exception, as he shows us that there is often a side to people that we don’t see that is so worth finding. Now, will there be more similarities between Jacob and Ken beyond being two guys who would never be caught dead shopping at The Gap? We’ll find out on the opening night of Barbie, with our roller blades laced and our ponytails high. If Ken hides similar secrets and sincerity in that meticulously coiffed head of hair, we might just have a new favorite Gosling performance. But until then, we can bestow these two magnetic men with the himbo badge of honor, and enjoy Gosling flexing his funny bone as characters who are unexpectedly kind, undeniably hilarious, and unapologetically themselves.