Sunday 13 October 2013

R.I.P.D.

Mini Review

I'm gonna cut right to the chase here because R.I.P.D. is one of those movies that is so bad, it made me want to put off writing the review for as long as possible. The two people I saw it with both fell asleep (several times) during the film, the entire cinema was deathly quiet throughout, despite this being a 'comedy' and one of my friends accurately described the movie as an 'unfunny Men In Black with dead people instead of aliens'. All true.

For those who are still interested in seeing this film, for whatever reason you have, I will give you a brief synopsis. Nick (Reynolds) is a Boston cop who is killed in action. His soul is sent to the 'Rest In Peace Department', a division of heaven where good cops go to capture bad souls who remain on earth. Nick is partnered with Roy (Bridges) while he learns the ropes of his new assignment and comes to terms with being dead.

The problem I have with writing a review for the movie is that I am having a hard time putting my finger on what it was that made the film so bad, because it certainly wasn't the leads. Reynolds and Bridges had good chemistry and were both good (with what little they had to work with). 

I can only think that it was a case of too many cooks spoil the broth, with that many writers being attributed to both screenplay and story I suspect that there were too many hands trying to make light work. The script just wasn't funny. And when you have someone like Reynolds on board, who initially endeared me to him by tickling my funny bone, that seems a great shame to me. The story is easy to follow but you never really root for the characters or feel that it is any great loss when one of them dies (which seems to happen a lot). 

I was also disappointed by the CGI. Considering this is a film that's heavy on effects, they should have been a lot better. 

To sum up, I genuinely feel it's a shame that R.I.P.D was not better, as I thought it had a lot of potential and all the filmmakers did was squander that on a poorly executed idea. 4.5 out of 10.


Viewing Date - 28th September 2013
UK Release Date - 20th September 2013

Cast Overview:
Roy ~ Jeff Bridges
Nick ~ Ryan Reynolds
Hayes ~ Kevin Bacon
Proctor ~ Mary-Louise Parker
Julia ~ Stephanie Szostak

Director ~ Robert Schwentke
Writer ~ Phil Hay (Screenplay and Story), Matt Manfredi (Screenplay and Story), David Dobkin (Story) and Peter M Lenkov (Dark Horse Comic) 

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