R.I.P.D.
(2013)
Roundly slated as a Men
in Black rip-off, R.I.P.D. has to
face up and plead guilty as charged. It’s Men
in Black without the star chemistry and
servicing the strictly formulaic plotting of that series’ second instalment. Really
though, it’s just pretty mediocre. This has been rather over shadowed by everything
else it represents; further evidence that Ryan Reynolds is box office poison
and also a huge loser for Universal as one of the biggest bombs of 2013 (barely
making back half of its costs).
It’s curious how little this feels like a Robert Schwentke
movie. His previous pictures at least feel fairly clean and precise in design
and composition, from Flight Plan to Time Traveller’s Wife to RED. The only familiarity here is the cutout
title/character designs used by RED
(a style that was appealing when it first appeared, but is rapidly becoming
over-used; we’ve also seen it in the likes of Tropic Thunder and Iron Man
Three). Perhaps Schwentke was fully aware he was making an MiB movie, as this looks like nothing so
much as if it was directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, with all the cartoonishness and
noisy inelegance that suggests.
The premise of dead cops and lawmen retained to dispense
justice in the afterlife (with the Rest In Peace Department) comes with a cumbersome
and unfinessed mythology attached. They must police “Deadoes”, the deceased who refuse to move on quietly and choose to
hang out in the physical world. Inevitably, there’s an ancient device (the
Staff of Jericho) that, when assembled, will allow the Earth to be invaded en
masse by departed souls. This kind of thing has been done before on TV; Brimstone, with no one’s favourite lead
actor Peter Horton and a fun turn by Jon Glover as the Devil; also Good vs Evil, concerning a heaven-sent
police force with a Blaxploitation vibe. Both of those aired around the turn of
the millennium, and Peter M. Lenkov’s Dark Horse comic, upon which this is
based, appeared about the same time. The long gestation period might well have
been a warning sign, but the returned-from-the-dead righter of wrongs is a
potent theme in everything from High
Plains Drifter to The Crow, and even
played for laughs it has potential. So what went wrong?
With Men in Black,
even when the plotting was running on fumes (again, I’m thinking mainly of the
second, but the third isn’t exactly ground-breaking even if it’s better than it
has any right to be) the easy chemistry of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones kept
it lively. R.I.P.D. has no such luck.
Reynolds and Bridges are consummately professional with each other, but there’s
no spark to their rookie and old-timer routine. It’s fashionable to rag on
Reynolds, and I couldn’t say I have a particular beef with him generally one
way or the other, but he doesn’t feel right for this. He’s been thrown a very
straight revenge/lost love narrative arc (with a bit of guilt over some
criminal activity in there too) and the sub-Patrick Swizzle Ghost malarkey doesn’t quite sit right
with the broadness in every other aspect.
Bridges, meanwhile, is just taking the piss. Is there any
reason other than his (deserved) True
Grit Oscar nomination that he seems to be essaying the same beardy
mumble-mouth at every opportunity since? I’ve been a fan since forever, but
this does inevitably wear thin. His is
a spirited performance – no one could accuse him of being lazy – but he’s just
not very funny, and his turn creates the added problem of nigh-on
incomprehensibility. Zach Galifianakis originally had the role, and that more
contemporary mismatch might have worked better with Reynolds. You can easily
imagine this went through a host of casting permutations before the producers
begrudgingly settle on these two, just to hit a start date. As it is, they look
like they should be in completely different movies and the tone is off as a
result.
Adding to that unevenness, R.I.P.D. has some of the worst CGI in any major $130m movie I can
recall. It’s replete with the kind of shitty
cartoony creature effects rife in pictures a decade or more ago (The Extraordinary League of Gentlemen,
for example, or any given Stephen Sommers movie). They going for the Men in Black slapstick creature work,
but what they’ve got is a sloppy digital mess. There’s nothing very inventive
about the Deadoes visually, and the weightless CGI, with characters careening
up skyscrapers or leaping to the ground from great heights, fails to be
endearingly large-than-life. Mostly because it’s all so slipshod and lacking in
any discernable quality control. Schwentke just has too much going on; this is
busy, busy, busy, without the style to compensate.
On the plus side, R.I.P.D.
doesn’t labour the point. It has some zip to it and, as undernourished as it is
in terms of originality, it occasionally hits its targets. There’s an Eternal
Affairs department, which investigates R.I.P.D. policing issues. Kevin Bacon is
in familiar bad guy mode but he’s good loathsome value, as is a brief
appearance from Robert Knepper (Knepper would actually have been a much better fit for lead villain, since
he has a naturally broader style). Mary-Louise Parker has a smallish role, but
her comic chops are a strong as ever (and she’s better catered for than in RED 2, which came out at the same time).
And Stephanie Szostak makes an impression in the Demi Moore role, particularly
when you consider she was signficantly less endearing in Iron Man Three the same summer.
As slipshod and derivative as much of this is, it does
occasionally raise a smile. Best are the avatars of Bridges’ Roy and Reynolds’s
Nick; humans see them as a voluptuous blonde (Marisa Miller) and an old Chinese
guy (the peerless James Hong) respectively, such an incongruous combination
(and accompanied by a raucously effective use of slow motion and Robyn’s Konichiwa Bitches) it can’t fail to
raise a smile every time we cut to them (which just can’t be enough times, as
it happens). Then there is the Deadoes’ reaction to spicy food, particularly
enjoyable when it’s Knepper mugging away with over-the-top disgust. The
presence of Hong, so wholly without equal in Big Trouble in Little China, reminds you that movie is the sort of
wild, whacky and witty ride this should be aspiring towards. Unfortunately it’s
nothing of the sort.
But I can’t be that
down on R.I.P.D. Visually it’s
frequently quite ugly, and jarringly edited. It’s noisy and lacks panache. The
leads just don’t mesh and the script is hasn’t an ounce of originality. But as
bad movies go, it’s rarely actually offensively bad. And occasionally it’s
actually borderline good fun.
**1/2
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