We’ve seen a whole lot of passionate (sometimes toxic) movie fandom over the last decade or so, but it’s important to remember that Hollywood is first and foremost a business.
That’s not to say that studio execs don’t care about the movies they make – just that they care about them in a different way. Movies are investments, and summer tent pole blockbusters are very big, very high-profile investments. This is why we see so few original stories; Hollywood leans on adaptations and sequels and remakes and the same ol’ formulas because they’re safer investments.
Where the studios get in trouble is when they’re too transparent with their risk-adverse approach, assembling movies with a kind of color-by-numbers approach. Like this: “Hey, let’s make our own version of Men in Black! We’ll just remake it with today’s versions of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, but instead of aliens we’ll use… um, the undead! Then we can throw in the bureaucracy gags in Beetlejuice without all the weird Claymation.”
How formula is today’s film? I wrote all that based solely on the trailer, and didn’t need to change a single word.
Directed by Robert Schwentke, 2013, 95 minutes, Rated PG-13
Men in Black: Reheated
We open in the middle of an action sequence with Ryan Reynolds voice-overing to us. Explosions! Mayhem! And then: “3 or 4 days ago.” Yeah, it’s going to be like that.
Ryan Reynolds plays the Will Smith role, this time a Boston cop who is quippy and a bit shady but just wants a better life for his wife. He and his partner, Kevin Bacon, have squirrelled away some gold from a crime scene, but Ryan Reynolds is having second thoughts. No such ethical qualms for Kevin Bacon – he just shoots Ryan Reynolds dead during a raid.
But death is just the beginning (literally, we’re only 10 minutes into the film), and after some snazzy freeze frame effects, Ryan Reyn—ugh, I’m going to have to look up this character name, aren’t I? Hold on… “Nick” is sent into the afterlife, which looks like a sterile interrogation room. There, The Proctor (Mary-Louise Parker!) gives Nick a choice: face Eternal Judgment as a dirty cop or join the R.I.P.D. Given that the latter is the name of the movie, I won’t hold you in suspense.
Nick is promptly teamed up with Jeff Bridges in the Tommy Lee Jones role (or “Roy,” as he’s called here) but still done up in his True Grit costume. Hey, you think Roy is going to grumble about how he “works alone” and doesn’t want a rookie partner? Congrats: you’ve seen a movie before.
So yeah, this is Men in Black but with the stylish black suits swapped out for all of the historic TV cop costumes in the studio’s warehouse. Their job is to keep the “dead-os” from “slipping through the cracks” of the afterlife and returning to earth, which causes the planet to “rot” – global warming, plagues, etc. “A hundred and fifty thousand people die every day; the system wasn’t designed to handle that kind of volume.” That’s a whole philosophical and theological can of worms that might’ve been interesting to dig into, but R.I.P.D. is more interested in having characters randomly withhold useful information from each other or being as cartoonish and juvenile as possible whenever Marisa Miller appears on screen.
The meat of the movie plays out in the most predictable way possible. Will Nick and Roy’s first case together somehow tie into whatever is going on with Kevin Bacon’s dirty cop? Will the villains pull off an elaborate heist that involves a mind-boggling amount of coincidences? Will Nick and Roy needle each other endlessly until they reluctantly bond and unite to take on insurmountable odds? Will there be mass destruction on suspiciously empty city streets? And will there be a blue sky beam?
But you already know the answer to those questions. The end result is a $130,000,000 movie that only makes half that money back and opens behind Grown Ups 2 in its second week and Despicable Me 3 in its third week.
I have to go full Dad Mode here: It’s not that R.I.P.D. is a bad movie (there are a couple interesting ideas here, the stars are stars for a reason, etc.). I’m just very disappointed.
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