R.I.P.D.: Too Awful to Review?

Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds are two dead cops in the summer's most inert movie

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Scott Garfield / Universal Pictures

On a torrid late afternoon in Manhattan, Universal Pictures finally let critics see its action comedy R.I.P.D., starring Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds as a pair of deceased lawmen who return to modern Boston to confront a horde of zombies, called “Deados.” The movie, based on Peter M. Lenkov’s Dark Horse comic book, arrived with its own stench of decay. A dozen years in gestation, with an announced budget of $135 million, this knockoff mashup of Ghostbusters and Men in Black bore the mark of a zombie artifact — hence the screening for critics just hours before the picture would open for business.

Less a bad movie than simply not a movie, R.I.P.D. gives every indication of having been a sloppy first-draft script (by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi) that the producers, in a strange spasm of innovation and despair, said, “Aaah, what the hell, let’s just shoot the damn thing.” Any consideration of the film deserves the same level of carelessness: no artful shaping of the review, no arduously composed lede and capper. So here is a rough transcription of my notes, scribbled in the 3-D dark, while sitting through the summer’s most inert film.

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Nick (Reynolds), a Boston cop on detail with his partner Bobby Hayes (Kevin Bacon, in the familiar Kevin Bacon sleaze-bag role), finds a stash of gold that they decide to keep. Nick has second thoughts, since he’s a good guy at heart, and Hayes shoots him in the face. The dead Nick is slowly sucked into the sky — along with Catholics below the age of six, R.I.P.D. believes that Heaven is “up” — where he lands in the office of Proctor (Mary-Louise Parker), the head of the Rest in Peace Department. She explains his mission, but it was hard to concentrate since Parker is upstaged by a bottle of Fresca she keeps on her otherwise pristine desktop. For the sake of the bottom line, I hope the Coca-Cola Company paid $135 million for this product placement.

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Nick is partnered with a Wyatt Earp-type named Roysephus Pulsipher (Bridges), the veteran peace officer — 19th century — to Nick’s raw recruit. They head back to Boston for a case that will of course lead to the stolen gold and its ultimate, cataclysmic, Raiders of the Lost Ark-ish purpose. On Earth, humans, including Nick’s wife Julia (Stephanie Szostak), see him not as his hunky self but as an older Chinese guy (James Hong); Roy has the Earth avatar of a blond bombshell (Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Marisa Miller). But the weirdest body switch is in the movie’s casting: Bridges’ role was originally to be played by Zach Galifianakis. The wardrobe department must have had to make some serious adjustments to Roy’s couture.

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The pitch meeting: “It’s old cop, young cop, only they’re both dead and back on Earth, like Warren Beatty in Heaven Can Wait.” David Dobkin, who had directed mismatched buddies (in the Jackie Chan-Owen Wilson Shanghai Knights) and a Ryan Reynolds body-switch comedy (The Change-Up), eventually passed the reins to Robert Schwentke, who made his feature-film debut with an old-cop, young-cop drama (Tattoo) and then directed a teleporting-body romance (The Time Traveler’s Wife). Wondering, though: Was there a director on the set during the R.I.P.D. shoot? Or is this the first film made by an intern while the real director was at lunch?

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A half-hour into the film, and it feels like the eighth day of jury duty.

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Being dead has its advantages, like not dying when falling from a tall building. When Roy does that, and lands on Nick, the tough old dude gives the callow young one his first compliment: “You have a very impressive crumple zone.” Reynolds, who can attribute his career success less to his acting teacher than to his personal trainer, usually gets to display acres of his perfect torso, but not here. The star has two new movies this week — the other is the DreamWorks* animated feature Turbo, for which he provides the title voice — and his fans get hardly a glimpse of Reynolds with his shirt off.

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Parker is also in two movies this weekend: R.I.P.D. and Red 2. She must wish, as we all do, that Weeds were still occupying her time.

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And Bridges: He should think about mothballing that “coot” character he played in Men Who Stare at Goats, Crazy Heart and True Grit. The varmint swagger and the intonations steeped in tobacco juice were fine once or twice, but outsize is not the right size for a performer long acclaimed for his range and subtlety. I’m starting to think that The Big Lebowski was a stroke of great bad fortune for Bridges; he kind of stopped being an actor and embraced the cartoon excesses of a character actor. Or, worse, just a character. If the R.I.P.D. producers wanted a big comic turn from a Lebowski star, they should have hired John Goodman, who at least has the girth to match his comic grandeur.

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It’s an oven outside the theater, but the slate of this week’s new pictures — the horror film The Conjuring, a minor cartoon feature called Turbo, a Red sequel and this — makes it seem like January in July. Is the glut of summer blockbuster wannabes over? For the last two months we were at least allowed the hope of Hollywood at its muscular, commercial best. Judging from R.I.P.D., the dumpster season has arrived early.

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For an expensive summer movie, R.I.P.D. looks pretty cheesy. The production design of the Heaven or Limbo sets look as if they were cobbled together by someone who saw Brazil when he was a kid, applied some of Terry Gilliam’s steampunk gadgetry, then tried to blend it with the sterility of a dentist’s office. The Deados are transformed into Incredible Hulk-style monsters through CGI effects that are about as sophisticated as the rubber masks in an Ed Wood movie. If you must watch the undead running amok in a large city, see World War Z.

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Boston has to get its priorities aligned. Three months ago, the people in charge shut down the city for a day to chase one guy (who’s on the cover of the Rolling Stone this week). But at the end of R.I.P.D., when the undead unleash their rampage, there’s barely a living cop in sight.

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The movie is almost over. I now feel as if I’ve been strapped into a hospital bed, and the wall TV is blaring a Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo marathon, and I can’t reach the remote.

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The Manhattan heat wave stalled the subway train I usually take to midtown. After the movie I stood for nearly a half-hour with hundreds of other sweltering commuters in the 42nd Street station, until someone — not a Transit employee, just a helpful civilian — announced that no trains would be coming. That was a draining, annoying experience, but easier to take than the 96 minutes of R.I.P.D.