R.I.P.D.

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R.I.P.D.

Release Date: July 19, 2013

Reviewed: July 21, 2013, 11:25 p.m.

"Rest in Peace (Department)"

S.H.I.T.

By: Christian Treubig

No rest for the wickedly hot.

I’m NOT gay. But whenever I see a Ryan Reynolds flick, I feel like I need a quick dip in Lake Minnetonka in mid-February. So recently, I’ve taken up a new pre-game routine prior to seeing any film starring one of Hollywood’s leading hunks. I do a Google Image search of said star, then spin the scroll wheel on my mouse into motion. As the pouty headshots flyboy, I take a felt tip pen and jam it straight into the hyper-sensitive center of my belly button. That way, I associate the stars’ beauty with pain, and not pleasure, so the excitement of seeing them on the big screen is mitigated greatly. It's usually effective, but has had side effects, namely the loss of my belly button’s outie-hood following a late night viewing of Ocean’s Twelve on TNT.

Needless to say, my torso was covered in ink as I walked into the theater to view R.I.P.D. Ryan Reynolds enters. No problem. My preparation paid off. But then, horror. Kevin Bacon!?!?!? He wasn’t even in the trailer! There was no way I could handle both Van Wilder and Jack Swigert for 90 minutes. I panicked, and entered a fugue state. I was suddenly having visions of driving to a cocktail party, at which both Reynolds and Bacon are present. I arrive at the event, looking so good that I walk through the front door without having to check-in like everyone else. Once inside, I spot the objects of my affection, and get a bit catty with their significant others. I backhand compliment the hell out of The Closer Kyra Sedgwick, saying “Oh Kyra, I think it’s wonderful that a talented actress like yourself was willing to take a break from films in the prime of your career to do a basic cable TV drama.” Then I set my sights on Blake Lively, and imply in not so subtle terms that she got out-acted by a narrator on Gossip Girl.

Once I snapped out of my trance, and actually started watching R.I.P.D., I immediately wished I was back at that cocktail party. Reynolds portrays a Boston cop, who in the first scene is shown burying gold in his backyard, which he nicked from a bust while on the job. The next day, he is killed by his co-conspirator (Bacon). Reynold’s soul is zapped up to the sky, and is offered a chance to avoid eternal damnation by joining the Rest in Peace Department.

Following the opening action sequence where Reynolds is killed, R.I.P.D. asserts itself as one of the most lazily written features in cinema history. It’s a wonderful combination of things that don’t make sense mixed with brief dialogue that glosses over what should be intricate concepts. Reynolds directive as a newly minted R.I.P.D. officer is to hunt down “dead-ohs” (great name), which are bad people who have died but have remained on Earth due to some sort of systematic failure up high. Their bodies and/or souls remain on Earth (the mechanics of this are not made clear), with the potential to wreak havoc on the populace when their souls deteriorate and turn their bodies into hulking monsters. Standard operating procedure for the R.I.P.D. is to attempt to peacefully apprehend the dead-oh and bring him back to the precinct. However, if they’re non-compliant, you just shoot them with a magic blue bullet that “erases” them, i.e. wipes the soul out of existence. For the dead-oh, this would presumably be a preferred alternative to an eternity in hell, so it’s not clear why they all just don’t go the suicide-by-cop route. Given the overstocked jail cells at the precinct though, it’s clear that the great majority of them don’t.

Reynolds partner on the force is played by Jeff Bridges, who does an exact replica of his Rooster Cogburn portrayal in True Grit. Bridges is obviously portraying a Texas/western lawman, yet he works in the Boston precinct of the R.I.P.D., which only contains the afterlife versions of officers from that city; this incongruence is never addressed. His character’s name is Roy, the unabridged version of which is apparently Roycifus (sp.?). In one of the writers’ many failed attempts at humor, Reynolds states that the name sounds like an STD… no, it doesn’t.

When Reynolds and Bridges are patrolling Earth, us alive and well people see them as Marissa Miller (a Sports Illustrated model who used to be in her twenties) and a Chinese man. How does that work? Well, it’s the “universe’s version of the witness protection program”; that’s the entirety of the explanation we’re given. Miller and the Chinese guy were inserted into movie purely to show up in the trailer. They’re on screen for roughly twenty seconds, and all of those shots except for the last two seconds (which would reveal the ending) are in at least one of the multiple trailers. (None of that math is an exaggeration.)

The plot that unfolds is boring and pointless, but that’s to be expected. The biggest offense is the nonsense circumstances under which Reynolds and Bridges insert themselves into said plot. The first dead-oh that they attempt to apprehend is in possession of the same type of gold that Reynolds buried back at his home. They are then able to connect this gold back to Kevin Bacon, who they then track. However, Bacon isn’t a dead-oh, but just another live human as far as the R.I.P.D. is concerned, so why pursue? The R.I.P.D. doesn’t concern itself with Earthly crimes, so Reynolds and Bridges shouldn’t care even if they’re about to blow open a huge heist case.

Reynolds and Bridges figure out at some point that the purpose of the gold is to build some really big piece of crap that will open up a portal to hell and bring all the dead bad guys back to Earth, and that Bacon is a actually a dead-oh incognito masterminding the whole thing. So how has he been able to escape detection for so long? Well, we’re told in perhaps the most lazily written line since the advent of color cinematography. Bacon apparently uses some sort of “spiritual deodorant” that Bridges, wait for it, has “heard of”. They manage to catch Bacon for a little bit, but he escapes the precinct after setting off some sort of grenade that freezes everyone in place except the dead-ohs (no explanation on the grenade’s origin or functionality).

Bacon escapes back to Earth with the rest of the dead-ohs to build the giant gold piece of crap and open the gates of hell. Reynolds and Bridges pursue through the streets of Boston, which are crawling with CGI dead-ohs but completely devoid of pedestrians (this is a $100+ million movie yet they apparently couldn’t afford extras). They shoot countless hundreds of magic blue bullets to take out every dead-oh, but Reynolds runs out right as he’s about to shoot Bacon point blank. Tough luck, Reynolds. Epic fistfight finale ensues. Edge of my seat.

This movie has one saving grace: Mary-Louise Parker, best known for her work in [insert her best known performance here… DO NOT publish to site until this is done, for the love of God]. She basically plays the Zed role from Men in Black, running the precinct and delivering her lines with a dry, molester’s wit. The film has a very clear line of demarcation. Every scene MLP is in is very good (and funny). Every other scene makes me ponder if I should change DuelingChaps.com to an indie rock review site. Unfortunately, she’s only in 3.5 scenes.

R.I.P.D. was very close to being DuelingChaps.com’s first zero score, but my newfound crush on Mary-Louise Parker saved the day. Consider this a warning shot across the bow of the major Hollywood studios. If you try to pull this crap again, DuelingChaps.com will exert its full influence and have you erased from the universe, either with a well-publicized zero or an unexplained magic blue bullet featured in this coat-hanger abortion of a flick.

SCORE (Out of 10):

Reynolds, Wrap It Up

By: Steve Loori

The tattoo Ryan Reynolds got on his lower back after reading this script…

Let me start by saying that Ghostbusters is my favorite movie of all time. When I was a young boy I used to make my grandfather watch it with me three times a day every time he babysat me, which was a frequent occurrence. Like a fine wine Ghostbusters has gotten even funnier with age, with Bill Murray’s humor finding a way to make me laugh harder as my intellect developed and my life experiences grew. Like every other human being, I also enjoyed Men in Black, so when the opportunity came to see those two cinematic wonders combine on the silver screen, I jumped at the chance. R.I.P.D. seemed to be just that, except with characters that would be way less creative and a script that appeared to be entirely unoriginal. It turns out that I was really overestimating this piece of crap.

The foundation of R.I.P.D. is that when a person dies that was skilled at upholding the law but flawed at upstanding life, he or she is given the opportunity to work off his or her sins by joining the Rest in Peace Department. Here I was, thinking that indulgences died off long ago – I guess those fat cat friars in the Middle Ages had it right all along, and are kicking back at a casino in heaven laughing about all of this. So the R.I.P.D. takes in these stray dogs, allowing them the opportunity to continue developing their craft in a purgatorial setting. The officers of the R.I.P.D. chase down those who should have been sent to hell, but dodged the draft to stay in their homeland for a little while longer. Of course, none of these villainous creatures that stick around Earth have done so for love or any other good-hearted reason – they all simply did not want to burn for the choices they made throughout life. Somehow it is all centered around the city that these people worked (I have no idea if small towns get their own R.I.P.D. subdivision like the major cities get or if the idea is that only big city officers have the opportunity to be decorated, celebrated, and talented), so that the setting of the movie stays the same and allows a story to develop. In this case, R.I.P.D. takes place in modern day Boston. So with a fully functional story, where do we go from here?

Insert the hunkiest Canadian this side of Alan Thicke, Ryan Reynolds. Now, I have always liked Ryan Reynolds. I was a fan of Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place way back when. If you did not enjoy Van Wilder you are blatantly lying. Just Friends was funny and had something for everyone. He has been slipping up in recent years though (we’re all looking at you Green Lantern) and a lot of people have been getting tired of seeing Ryan Reynolds everywhere. As a younger man when my comic book obsession was at its peak, Ryan Reynolds was rumored to be every single major hero that was coming out, which made a lot of people turn on him (even though it was in no way his fault). The problem with Ryan Reynolds is very unfortunate because it has nothing to do with Ryan Reynolds; he consistently plays the same character very well because scripts keep coming his way that call for him to be that likeable, quick-witted, well-built movie star. He is the John Cena of Hollywood, and this movie cements that. Throughout R.I.P.D. Ryan Reynolds does nothing redeeming, fascinating, or spectacular. It is frustrating to watch. However, he plays the character perfectly and the way that he was supposed to. Just like with Cena, you know that there is so much more that he can do if writers would just let him do it, but he gets held back so that he can be the character that people already know that they like. I am sure he was paid handsomely to do so (and to be handsome), and I know that if I were him I would do the same thing. Being an artsy actor is awesome, but so is being a millionaire ten times over.

Opposite Ryan Reynolds is Jeff Bridges. In a shocking turn of events to no one, Jeff Bridges did a phenomenal job in R.I.P.D. Did I enjoy his character? Not really. Was that Jeff Bridges’ fault? Absolutely not. Bridges did everything he could with his character Roy, a former lawman in what I think was Texas, but somehow he ended up in Boston. Boston does not qualify as the Old West and never has, so Bridges was the veteran cop and a fish out of water when dealing with the way more modern rookie in Reynolds. The two actors played well off of each other and had good chemistry – charm and congeniality oozed out of the duo – but you just cannot get blood out of a stone. A year from now people will still be quoting The Big Lebowski like it is a deadbeat bible, so making crappy movies has no real effect on Bridges. But he still brought the character alive with all of the skill that any veteran actor would dream of having. You try getting excited to be in R.I.P.D. – I assure you, it cannot be easy. Jeff Bridges is an Oscar winner!

In the most interesting plot turn in R.I.P.D., Kevin Bacon is in it with a main role. He plays a generic Kevin Bacon type villain (like his role in X-Men: First Class, minus the entertainment value). Buzz from Home Alone also plays a villain and not surprisingly is not good at it, since the only thing anyone knows him as is Buzz from Home Alone. Talk about peaking early, yikes. Mike O’Malley has a brief role as spiritual informant. And somehow Andy from According to Jim was in this movie too! All of these were nice surprises. None of them mattered, except for Bacon, who phoned this in so hard for an easy payday that it may not have been Kevin Bacon at all, it might have just been this guy. I hope for the sake of his career that it was the latter.

Now that I have talked about the acting, I want to take a peek at the linguistic wizards who penned this epic monstrosity. The immediate frightening realization is that it took three people to share the load of R.I.P.D.. David Dobkin wrote the Clint Howard classic Ice Cream Man, along with R.I.P.D. and Jack the Giant Slayer which have been two of the year’s biggest box office flops thus far. Somebody commission that guy for another writing gig. In addition to Dobkin, the other writers are Phil “What The” Hay and Matt Manfredi, who seem to be a dynamic duo in the writing world. They have worked together on The Tuxedo, Crazy/Beautiful, and Clash of the Titans (the one from 2010, not the Harry Hamlin classic). Most notably, though, this tandem is teaming up for the 2014 comedy Ride Along, which has the following plot outline according to IMDB: “Fast talking security guard Ben (Kevin Hart) joins his cop brother-in-law James (former gangsta rapper turned child movie star Ice Cube) on a 24-hour patrol of Atlanta in order to prove himself”. Now I know, you are probably thinking “that is money in the bank!” You are not the only one thinking that because a sequel has already been announced, and, best of all, Manfredi and Hay are back in the saddle again for the sequel! Somebody put the academy on alert because I smell back-to-back gold.

I really do not have much else to say about R.I.P.D. The acting was on point, but the movie was such a ball of junk that it was hard to get behind the actors. If it was not for the acting the final score for this movie would be even lower (that’s Dane Cook territory ladies and gents). It was some strange mix of Ghostbusters, Men in Black, and The Frighteners, with Rooster Cogburn and every Ryan Reynolds character showing up for the ride.

Do not see R.I.P.D.

SCORE (Out of 10):

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