So did Scarlett Johansson put a curse on Ryan Reynolds’
career after their divorce? Because there can be no other explanation for
Reynolds starring in R.I.P.D. After a few years of duds, this is what he chose
to be his comeback movie? It’s the worst movie of 2013 so far, and I shudder to
think what could possibly beat it. (And yes, I’ve seen Grown Ups 2, and
R.I.P.D. is still worse.)
The film is based on a comic book, “Rest in Peace
Department,” by Peter M. Lenkov, but it has three story adapters and two
screenwriters and there’s no sense of consistency around any of it. Starring
Reynolds and Jeff Bridges as unlikely partners working as undead cops, the film
basically copies all of the beats of the first Men in Black film, but without
any of its easy-breezy tone. Will Smith had more charisma than Reynolds does
here, and Tommy Lee Jones’ cantankerousness wasn’t yet a joke. Their young
upstart/older, crotchety mentor dynamic felt fresh. Everything about Reynolds
and Bridges feels rehashed, lukewarm. This movie had a $130 million budget;
where did it go? It’s certainly not showing up onscreen.
The plot, from what I could make of it, is this: Boston
police officer Nick (Reynolds) helps his more corrupt partner Hayes (Kevin
Bacon) steal some pieces of gold during a drug bust, with intentions to use his
piece to provide a better life for his wife, Julia (Stephanie Szostak). But the
guilt is nagging at him, so he tells Hayes he’s going to come clean, leading
his obviously immoral partner to kill
him to cover up the crime. Along the way to judgment, Nick is swooped up by the
Rest in Peace Department and encouraged to join; 100 years of service will
help wipe his dirty cop slate clean, which might allow him to go to Heaven
eventually.
But what does the R.I.P.D. actually do? Well, according to
Proctor (Mary Louise-Parker), it’s their responsibility to gather up dead
humans who have refused to leave the Earth; their rotting souls are what
cause decay, global warming, sickness, and every other ill of human society. So
the officers of the R.I.P.D. arrest them and deliver them on to judgment,
allowing humans to live happy, productive lives. (There is no discussion that
death is needed to keep populations down, or that sickness can help spur
developments in science and technology, or anything else; it’s as reductive as,
“death is bad and we need to get rid of it.”)
So yeah, Nick decides to join up, and he’s paired with the
Civil War-era Roy (Bridges), who throws out lines like “I’m a one-man operation” and
calls him “Rook” and refuses to let him shake his hand, because he’s “gotta
earn” that opportunity. When you’re done wading through the clichés with me,
let’s get to the point of the film, which is that the Dead-Os are gathering up
pieces of gold for some mysterious, nefarious plot of their own, and oh man, is
Nick’s piece of gold going to be involved?, and why does Hayes keep lurking
around Julia, anyway?
And sprinkled throughout that are a bunch of nonsensical
plot twists and idiotic film backstory that are delivered mainly through long, drawn-out explanations clunkily fit in with the rest of
the dialogue. At one point, when the pair have discovered that the Dead-Os are
looking for an artifact that can help bring about the apocalypse, Roy
complains, “They got one of those artifacts for everything!” But really it’s
that the film tries to have an excuse for everything it does wrong, which is so, so many things, and even then fair amount of inexplicable details slip through the cracks. Dead-Os are
supposed to be sentimental, but why? Does that suggest that people who go to
heaven aren’t sentimental? Why would that be a bad thing? How are the Dead-Os
able to hide their decay from humans; why can they switch between identities?
Why does Indian food gross them out? Why? Why? WHY?!
Perhaps the incoherency of the film would be more
palatable if it looked great, but no. The vast majority of it is created with
CGI, but not the high-level stuff; the Dead-Os look fuzzy and blurry and
nondescript, and if you see this film in 3-D, the murkiness and darkness make
things even worse. And the way director Robert
Schwentke shoots the action scenes—all fast zooms, extremely rapid cuts,
and first-person-shooter video-game views—adds to the confusion. Who is
shooting at who? What was that big blob over there? Why are we still using
slow-motion, 300-style tracking shots? Why? Why? WHY?!
I am going to keep
repeating “Why?” because I have very little else to say about this epic
trainwreck of a movie. Please, please don’t see it. Value your time more than I
did.
(Yes, there are no
Guttenbergs down here because the rating for this review is zero out of five
Guttenbergs. Zilch.)
