RIPD (2013)
Directed by: Robert Schwentke
Written by: Matt Manfredi, Phil Hay
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Kevin Bacon, Mary-Louise Parker, Ryan Reynolds
What is it all about?
A recently slain cop joins a team of undead police officers working for the Rest in Peace Department and tries to find the man who murdered him. Based on the comic by Peter M. Lenkov.
The Film Trailer!
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCvJtozx0AA[/youtube]
The Hughes Verdict
Rest in peace…….
Arriving in Britain with huge negative ratings and even a few words of disdain from star himself Jeff Bridges, can R.I.P.D actually be that bad? Well after watching it, I guess sometimes you need to put your hand up and say…..”yes we totally XXXXXX up here!, now please lets move on!”.
R.I.P.D is a shambles of a mess from start to finish, an uneven tone throughout makes the whole viewing quite a staggering waste of time and you be left scratching your head debating how the heck they got this so wrong. We at HCF probably won’t see a worst film this year, going by the pile of straight to DVD horror’s we pile through each week, but none of them will have such a high standard cast and a budding great director in the shape of Robert Schwentke. Believe what you have heard, this is awful.
You have got to ask the question in why did R.I.P.D try its best to borrow the blueprint from the not so delightful M.I.B. franchise. The Will Smith trilogy has only one brilliant film out of the three, the second only saved thanks to a last clever twist and the third thanks to the acting of Josh Brolin. R.I.P.D does its best to try and build on that world, but instead of aliens we have the undead, not a really comfortable angle for the little ones tuning in.
Things do not start well with Nick (Ryan Reynolds) and Hayes (Kevin Bacon) as a pair of cops who after an argument over some gold, Nick lays died by the hands of Hayes and heads off to purgatory where he is told he will now be an R.I.P.D Officer, bringing those souls who have escaped to Earth back to the land of the dead. Now unlike Agent J who spent the whole night on that bench debating to give up his life to become a man in black, here Nick just accepts his fate like it was a normal day, Here is a guy who has just been gunned down by his former partner, leaving behind his gorgeous wife Julie (Stephanie Szostak) and he acts with no insane emotion that probably any normal guy would suffer from.
This is the fundamental flaw of R.I.P.D. Look deep into the whole plot and what we have is a rich full of material of black comedy gold that wouldn’t go amiss in the genre. But trying to sell out to the teenage crowd and dare I say for the kids out there, then we are left with a film that sparkles a taste of darkness but can only offer lightness and sugar coats, a bad idea when you are making a film about a dead copper trying to bring back souls.
Not even the arrival of his new partner Roy.(Jeff Bridges) a western sheriff whose original self was eaten by Coyotes ( again you can just taste the darkness) can lighten up the mess even though we do have one brilliant gag that is so good that it gets repeated over and over. While on Earth, you can’t be seen as your old self so while we the viewer get to see the faces of Nick and Roy, those on Earth see Nick as an old chinese man (James Hong), while the dated Roy has the appearance of a blond beauty Melissa Miller. What starts as good gag gets tiresome way before the end credits.
On Earth we get a slight GHOST kind of sub plot involving Nick and his wife…yawn…. and the whole business of the gold that triggered his death rears its end with a middle half twist any viewer would have guessed as soon as you saw Kevin Bacon in the bad guy role.
With CGI bursting on every scene, the whole show is unmemorable from start to finish. What should have been a film that could have happily shared the same breath as say Beetlejuice, instead painfully tries hard to be friendly when in reality it should have been spitting venom.
Remove the D and you have a perfect title for a not perfect film…..
Rating: 
I’d never watched the trailer up until this point and I must say it’s quite a confusing plot. Not exactly as straightforward as MIB was.
Awful film! The only thing that worked was Jeff Bridges’ awesome performance, but the rest sucked big time. So disappointed