R.I.P.D. .....Dead On Arrival

The trailer for R.I.P.D. made it look like a version of Men In Black with Jeff Bridges. That actually stirred my interest a little bit. Unfortunately this movie barley ever exceeds that expectation.

 

RIPD picks up right before Nick Walker is killed in a police raid. He finds himself postponing judgment by joining the Rest In Peace Department. He is quickly partnered with a veteran sheriff from the 1800s Roy Pulsipher. The R.I.P.D. is an organization of the "best police officers who ever lived and died" tasked with seeking out the Deados who are the evil souls that escape judgment and hide out among the living.

It's a pretty cool concept. It's also disappointing that it quickly dissolves into repulsive creature jokes, unoriginal plot lines, and a completely predictable sci-fi/buddy cop/save the world laugh less fest. The biggest disappointment was the humor: jokes we've all heard before, missed opportunities for a good punch line, and absurd antics. Ryan Reynolds tries too hard and achieves complete forgetablility. Jeff Bridges spoofs his own character from True Grit and barley moves past being just plain annoying. The one small bright spot in this fiasco is Kevin Bacon as the twisted villain.

At the end of RIPD I remembered I had seen this before: Not as Men in Black, but in the trailers for RIPD. If you've seen these trailers, you've seen pretty much all the main plot points, any jokes worthy of a chuckle and probably the best version of this almost two hour misfire.