R.I.P.D. (2013)

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nTitle: R.I.P.D. (2013)

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nDirector: Robert Schwentke

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nCast: Jeff Bridges, Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Bacon, Mary-LouisenParker, James Hong

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nI’m sure that as a concept the idea for R.I.P.D. must havensounded good to the people behind this film. I mean, dead cops fighting ghosts andnmonsters? Sounds cool alright, I mean, with the right crew behind the film,nthis thing could have been like a mix between Ghostbusters and Men In Black. Unfortunately,njudging by the resulting film, the crew behind R.I.P.D. weren’t really interestednin making a decent picture. So what we’re talking about here is the first truenturkey of the Summer 2013 season. Yeah, yeah, I know what you’re saying, wasn’tnThe Lone Ranger (2013) the biggest flop of the summer? And you’d be right, ThenLone Ranger did lose a lot of money, but at least it didn’t fail because it wasna bad film, it failed because it was about cowboys, and kids don’t give a crapnabout cowboys nowadays. If you ask me, The Lone Ranger is actually a goodnwestern that got ignored by audiences because it was bad mouthed even before itnwas released. I hate it when that happens! But back to R.I.P.D., now here’s andud that failed because simply put, it’s wasn’t a good film at all, it’s justnso average. And this comes from a fan of sci-fi and horror! Where did R.I.P.D. go wrong?

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nIn R.I.P.D. we are presented with Nick, a police officer whonbites the bullet in the first five minutes of the film. When he goes to thenafterlife, he learns that when police officers die they immediately join annundead police force called R.I.P.D. which stands for Rest in Peace Department,nget it? So anyhow, Nick is assigned to work with Roy (Jeff Bridges) who innaccordance to buddy cop movie rule #579 immediately hates his new partner.nJesus, when will they ever break with these silly cliché’s in buddy cop movies?nDon’t they realize they are making the same damn movie for the millionth time? Sonanyway Nick and Roy partner up to find some undead dude who wants to destroynthe tunnel that people take to go to heaven? Will they manage to stop himnbefore the undead roam the earth?

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nThe concept of undead cops fighting ghost and goblins is angood one, unfortunately the movie these guys made isn’t. Okay, think of thenpossibilities of cops fighting ghosts? It just sounds cool don’t it? Unfortunately Robert Schwentke, the director behind this film and the writersnPhil Hay and Matt Manfredi decided to focus all their strengths into making theirnown version of a MIB movie but with ghosts instead of aliens, as a result thenconcept immediately looses any possibility of novelty. You feel you’ve beennthere and done that, but without Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones and withoutnRick Baker doing the cool make up effects. What you get though is wisecrackingnRyan Reynolds playing the rookie cop and Jeff Bridges playing a grouchy cowboy,nsimilar to the one he played in the Coen Bros. film True Grit (2010). I mean,nthis is such a rip off of Men in Black that you can literally take anyncharacter from R.I.P.D. and find its counterpart in Men In Black. R.I.P.D. is a Xeroxncopy with zero originality, and you can put that on your dvd cover if you want,nfree of charge.

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nOn top of all that, the movie is kind of afraid to embracenthe kind of film it’s supposed to be, which is an ailment that many filmsndealing with horror elements are suffering from in todays modern cinematicnlandscape. I mean, with very few exceptions, like Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead (2013),ntruly horrifying films have been disappearing from cinemas. And so what we getnare these watered down versions of horror, which is just sad. Do you think the folks behind Dead Heat (1988), the movie about two cops who become zombies, were afraid of the fact that they were making a zombie film? Hell no! They made a damn good zombie/buddy cop movie! And they made no apologies about it! With R.I.P.D., we’rentalking about a film that deals with the supernatural, the undead, aboutnghosts, it’s common sense that the film needed to be spookier, scarier, we’rendealing with freaking ghosts here man! It would have been a good idea to mixnthe comedy with the horror. The way Ghostbusters (1984) or Beetlejuice (1989) did?nInstead, the movie is so squeaky clean it doesn’t feel like a movie aboutnghosts, it doesn’t even feel like a movie about the supernatural. Hell, evennthe ghosts don’t look like ghosts! And here’s where the film really failed fornme. Every single one of its creatures where terrible computer generated images,nI mean, just atrocious! And that’s one thing that they didn’t manage tonduplicate from the MIB films, the excellent make up and visual effects. I meannin Men In Black 3 (2012) for example, the visual and make up effects were topnnotch! The movie might have been simple as hell, but the effects werenentertaining an extremely well achieved. On R.I.P.D. they failed to deliver goodneffects, the character designs where just banal. The one thing that matters thenmost in a movie of this kind -the monsters- where not handled well at all andnthat my friends is what brought this movie down to the ground.

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nIs there anything good to say about R.I.P.D.? Well, the onensaving grace the film has is Bridges and Reynolds keeping things fun with theirnbanter. But then again, it’s nothing you haven’t seen before in thousands ofnother buddy cop films. The older cop hates his new partner, you know how thatngoes, they have to learn to appreciate each other for who they are and sonforth. There’s a couple of funny ideas squeezed in there, like the fact that thenundead has to get into a bathroom and flush the toilet to go to the real world,nor the fact that Ryan Reynolds looks like James Hong to humans, and Bridgesnlooks like a super hot model, which creates some funny moments, but you kind ofnfeel they could have milked that premise a bit more. Well, over all, that’s itnmy friends. R.I.P.D. is a missed opportunity, a film based on a comic book with annifty premise that unfortunately spawned a very derivative film. You might havensome goofy fun with this one, but I say wait for it on dvd and even then, don’tnexpect too much. Afterwards, you’ll feel like the MIB used their brain washingnmachine on ya.

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nRating: 2 ½ out of 5   

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