by Joseph Rossi
First it was The Hangover 3, then After Earth and soon after, The Lone Ranger. Now, we have this…
What do you get when you cross Ghostbusters with Men in Black? You get R.I.P.D. You know what we get as moviegoers expecting a good time? Nothing. No one is even trying here. This is a patchwork mess that makes me think that Ryan Reynolds should live off his royalties and stop making movies for a while. He should reevaluate his choices because after The Green Lantern, The Change Up, and Safe House, he hasn’t been lighting the screens on fire. Jeff Bridges is miles away from subtlety, trying his hand at broad humor. Amusing at first but grating by the end. Hope that big paycheck was worth it.
Reynolds plays Nick, a bland Boston cop with a conscience who bites the big one after his partner (played by a grinning and now richer for this Kevin Bacon) kills him. His soul is whisked away to the Rest in Peace Department where his new boss (played by Mary Louise Parker) assigns him a new job, protecting the living from the dead souls who refuse to cross over. With such a job comes a partner and in true “buddy cop “ fashion he is assigned a crusty, old timer named Roy, played by Jeff Bridges. Think Rooster Cogburn come back from the dead; same character, more lawman than drunkard. As they roam the streets as dead men, they are disguised as human avatars; Roy as a hot blond (model Marisa Miller) and Nick as an old Chinese man (the great James Hong). Truth be told, this was the most amusing aspect of the film.
The film is by Red director Robert Schwentke who uses 135 million dollars to throw cheap looking effects at the screen. The “Deado’s”, the souls that Nick and Roy must seek out, look like characters out of a video game. The action is all CGI’d up so it looks phony. Nothing seems genuine. In an overcrowded summer full of big effects movies that have underperformed, here is another bloated, meaningless piece of junk that’s sole purpose is to suck hard earned money from the movie going public.
