Dead on the floor---Ryan Reynolds, Mary Louise Parker and Jeff Bridges as cops in the afterlife in RIPD
When I first saw the trailer for RIPD....I admittedly thought it looked pretty awesome. Sure...I could tell it was going to be a Men In Black rip off but the thought of a veteran actor like Jeff Bridges being paired with the very charismatic Ryan Reynolds seemed to make me excited. After having seen the film itself....all I can say is I was dead wrong. This is a shockingly bad film. It's not just bad, though....it's incredible lazy. There is nothing here that a toddler couldn't have written with some crayons and construction paper. It's not like we needed this but it could have at least been entertaining. It fails in every aspect possible. The jokes fall flat, the action is weird and hurst the eyes and the chemistry between Reynolds and Bridges is non-existent. It is a mistake that should have never happened.
In the film.....Reynolds plays Nick...a 15 year cop from Boston whose partner, Hayes (Kevin Bacon) kills him during a shootout. It is then that Nick is transported to the Rest In Peace Department. He is greeted by a proctor (Mary Louise Parker) who assigns him to work with Roy (Bridges.) Roy shows Nick the ropes of catching monsters who disguise themselves as humans and hide out on Earth.
Let's start with the writing by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi. These are the two men who also wrote the Clash Of The Titans remake and Aenoflux. Naturally....if I knew these men were the writers of the film...I may have backed off entirely. Yet...their first time writing was on the excellent romantic drama Crazy/Beautiful back in 2001. Perhaps it's because they weren't trying their hand at an action film that their first film was so good.
Now...the direction by Robert Schwentke has to be discussed. Schwentke did the first Red film as well a Flight Plan. Obviously this man knows how to direct a decent action film. He's actually the contrary of Hay and Manfredi because when he tried to do a romantic drama (The Time Traveler's Wife to be exact)....it didn't work at all. I want to say that Schwentke's direction isn't even bad here and that the lazy writing just makes everything seem bad. However, that would be giving the film too much credit and letting Schwentke off the hook too easily.
Also...I generally like Reynolds and Bridges as actors. Bridges is obviously far superior to Reynolds but I think Reynolds and Bridges both have an excellent charisma to them. However, they don't work well together here. It's not their fault, though. They haven't worked together before and the script doesn't allow for them to get to know each other. Therefore....the chemistry is non-existent between them because they're obviously not used to being around one another.
The monsters also all look fake. There's no life to them. It's your standard CGI and it gives the film a very inauthentic feeling. There's nothing in RIPD that works in fact. I chuckled at the sight of where they hide their organization the first time I saw it. However, they don't show it again until towards the end and by that point...I really didn't care anymore. Bacon is hamming it up and brings nothing new to the table and the whole film is redundant and shallow. I'm sorry if this review was a bit of a rant but I really want to enforce that RIPD is truly a film that should be missed by all.
(0 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated PG-13 for violence, sci-fi fantasy action, some sensuality, and language including sex references)
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