Review of R.I.P.D. (2013) by Stuart M — 02 Aug 2014

Atrocious. Don't know what they were thinking here. None of the components worked together and even the genuinely original bits felt cliched because of how they were introduced.

The story isn't bad, but the execution and details are incredibly silly. Deados? Really? That's the name for your villains? I can't even say that without groaning internally. For that matter the very concepts they toy with are stupid. Deados (shudder) are revealed in their true form by inhaling curry powder? That doesn't even begin to make sense, and not in a quirky way. In fact, it's details like that that ruin all elements of this story. Take the concept that humans see the RIPD guys in different forms, so Bridges is an attractive blonde while Reynolds is James Hong (now anyone who's seen any of the 350 films he's been in is now one degree closer to Kevin Bacon). It's a great concept, but they carry it out so inconsistently that you have to question the point. Since Jeff Bridges spends most of the film looking like Jeff Bridges you tend to forget that everyone he's talking to sees him as an attractive blonde, which makes the moments where people acknowledge the blonde disorienting. And random. Even those moments aren't played to their full since the girl doesn't get his best out of place salty old sheriff lines. And why is it so bad to be James Hong? Dude's got a great voice.

The afterlife concept is poorly thought out with some kind of judgement system but if you miss the moment and get stuck on Earth you're automatically a monster? And yet they clearly show people who that doesn't happen to so it clearly doesn't mean what they say it means. The rules are ill-defined and confusing. Apparently you can earn brownie points if you're a dick but have useful skills and are in danger of getting erased if you fail to fulfill the tasks set you by heaven. Which further makes me question that whole judgement thing.

The effects here are the worst I have ever seen on a big budget film. They look like something out of a bad made-for-TV film from the '90s. And worse still there's a lot of them. Watching a giant fat deado (shudder) walk up walls with his body weight having no relation to any sort of animated physics whatsoever is just appalling. The moments where they try to make our heroes do impossible stunts are even worse. Watching an apparently weightless Ryan Reynolds get thrown into a pole was classic.

The worst part of this film is that Jeff Bridges is actually brilliant in it. He turns in a wonderful performance that reminds me a lot of his Rooster Cogburn but with more winking at the camera. He gets exactly the tone that this film was supposed to be striving for. It's everyone else that drops the ball. The filmmakers have no idea what to do with a decent performance, so naturally they try to wedge him into cheap physical comedy and silly expressions. I wish I could have seen the film Bridges thought he was making because that film was gold! Ryan Reynolds is playing it serious since he seems to have decided to be an actual actor now, and while a gifted performer could make a straight reading of this ridiculous script funny Reynolds can't pull it off. He treats it far too seriously and seems to try so hard being the straight man that his buddy cop routine never actually works. Generally he just comes off as a dick, such as the time he mocks a guy by talking about coyotes (literally) humping his dead skull. Literally! What a class act.