As expensive and useless as something youd buy in a duty-free store, R.I.P.D. appears to be the work of filmmakers who sawMen in Blackat an impressionable age, slapped themselves on their foreheads, and exclaimed: Hey! We can do that!
Unfortunately, they cant though not for any lack of trying.
Based on a graphic novel the same sort of source material that, not coincidentally, also inspiredMiB this loud, clunky, sci-fi fantasy action-comedy imagines a secret organization of undead law enforcers charged with controlling (and, in extreme cases, destroying) human-disguised demons. The latter are said to haunt the entire planet but appear to congregate primarily in Boston.
It appears to be the work of filmmakers who saw Men in Black at an impressionable age and exclaimed, Hey! We can do that!
Ryan Reynolds stars as Nick Walker, a Beantown police detective who shuffles off this mortal coil after being fatally shot by his corrupt partner during the chaos of a drug raid. Then he gets a shot at redemption when hes enlisted by an outfit known as the Rest In Peace Department (R.I.P.D.). He spends most of the movie behaving as someone intent on living down a terrible mistake, but his humorlessness is, strangely enough, more ingratiating than not.
Mary-Louise Parker is a deadpan delight as Proctor, the R.I.P.D. bureau chief who first recruits, and then commands, Walker. Indeed, her off-center line readings are funny even when the actual lines are not, and theres something nicely, subtly wacky about the way her characters coiffure and attire along with the never-explained presence of a vintageFrescabottle on her desk suggest that Proctor met her own demise sometime in the mid-1960s.
Roycephus Pulsifer whod really rather you call him Roy died even further back in time; specifically, the Wild West era, give or take a decade, when Roy rode tall as a sheriff before he, too, was waylaid by a treacherous partner and drafted into R.I.P.D.
Theres nothing at all deadpan about Jeff Bridges portrayal of Roy. Hell, I would venture to say that his performance basically a feature-length send-up of his Oscar-nominated turn as the cranky, swaggering Rooster Cogburn inTrue Grit could define whatever might be considered the polar opposite of deadpan.
Still, much of this shtick is mildly amusing, especially when director Robert Schwentke (Red) and scriptwriters Phil Hay and Matt Mafredi put the silly plot on pause while Bridges cantankerous galoot and Parkers monotone martinet define the contours of a drolly weird love-hate relationship.
The relationship that forms between Roy and Nick who, naturally, are paired as partners is rather less interesting, because the bonding comes off as less a parody of buddy-cop movie clichs than a rote rehashing of same. And while it seems modestly clever at first that they appear to onlookers as different entities while they roam among the living Roy is a drop-dead beautiful woman (Marisa Miller), and Nick is an elderly Asian gentleman (James Hong) the joke remains, like too many other things inR.I.P.D., lazily underdeveloped.
Unfortunately, the sporadic flashes of oddball lunacy are increasingly overshadowed as the movie progresses by all the big-ticket sound and fury weve come to expect (if not dread) in a wannabe summer blockbuster. The plot has something to do with a plan by demons to rebuild an ancient talisman that could literally unleash hell on earth, and something else to do with the threat posed to Nicks widow (Stephanie Szostak) by his former partner (played by Kevin Bacon in such way that a surprising plot twist isnt surprising at all).
But the scenario serves mainly as an excuse for a great deal of third-act CGI overkill which is presented in 3D, by the way, but that doesnt make it any less tediously repetitious. Still, R.I.P.D. is by no means a total disaster, and its minor pleasures are sufficiently pleasurable to make it bearable, if not laudable.
---Follow Joe Leydonon MovingPictureBlog.
Source: http://austin.culturemap.com/news/music_film/07-21-13-ripd-movie-review/
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