R.I.P.D.

Poor Ryan Reynolds. He just can't sell a movie anymore, can he? The sad part is, he's the most likable part of this movie. The rest of this movie is just so poor.

The Rotten Tomatoes consensus says that this film benefits from Jeff Bridges as a great cowboy-esque cop. In reality, he's unbelievably annoying and refuses to shut up. Ever. I don't care if it's his character or it was mostly unscripted small talk. It's annoying. It makes him horrendously unlikable. And what's more, he's a dick. He talks down to Reynolds character for missing his wife, for wanting to get revenge on the partner that shot him in the back while he was on the force. But he's gone through the same things as Reynolds, according to his non-stop talking. I don't understand how he can dismiss Reynolds so easily, and even if it is from "suppressing it" as he says, I still don't buy that there would be absolutely no sympathy whatsoever.

The effects in this film are truly appalling. I hated the visual style. Sure the dead people looked creepy, but they were so obviously CGI that any sense of detachment from the theatre was completely lost. I hated looking at their obvious fake bodies. Moreso, I didn't understand why they looked the cartoony way that they did - wouldn't a dead person decay, or at least become more demonic? Why are they getting fat? Why do they have tattoos? Maybe it was trying for the zany look of aliens from Men in Black. But here it doesn't work. I know nothing of the comic book, but I can't picture a story like this working in a cartoony light. In fact, I wouldn't have even called it R.I.P.D.

Building off of that, to have scenes where Ryan Reynolds is hopelessly watching over his funeral and have it surrounded with humor is mean spirited, cruel, and uncomfortable. Only more proof that this story simply cannot work with the cartoony plot going for it. More scenes such as sentimentally trying to show his wife who he is, or even the immediate recognition that he is in fact dead, these scenes can't be shot lightly. At least, not if you're going to make the main character believably human. The whole premise of this as a comedy is flawed.

Plot points in this are just laughably bad. Why are dead people revealed by the use of cumin? And if that's the case, why wasn't Jeff Bridges revealed for his true appearance when he ate Indian food? Why is it that they break everything they walk near (and why does this only conveniently work when it needs to)? More importantly, if containing dead people is the primary objective of the R.I.P.D, how on earth did they let Kevin Bacon go away unnoticed? The story writes itself into the strangest holes.

There's just nothing to care about in this movie. No characters, no story, no fear of eradication. Even from the very beginning, Ryan Reynolds death is so clean and his body so unscathed that I didn't have any shock from his death, at all. Really, this was just a waste of a pretty clever idea.

Rank - 1/5