Based on a
comic book by Peter Len Melkov, this movie was a dismal failure, making only
$78m on it’s $130m budget. Critically it was disastrous too, it holds a 14%
rating on Rotten Tomatoes (average 3.6/10) and a 5.6/10 on IMDb, bear in mind,
this is the same rating Green Lantern got. To find out why, let’s just dig
right in.
It begins
with 2 guys chasing a fat man, as all movies should! Ryan Reynolds narrates, as
all movies shouldn’t, unless they’re Deadpool, this is not Deadpool.
We cut to 3
or 4 days ago, because the writer couldn’t make up his goddamn mind. Reynolds
buries a golden plot mcguffin the garden and covers it up with an orange tree.
He has a hot girlfriend but somehow has money trouble. Reynolds goes to
work. Yeah, I know he has a name, but when the movie bothers to tell me what it
is, I’ll use it.
He’s a
corrupt cop working with Kevin Bacon, aka Bobby. Reynolds’ name is Nick, huh. Anyway, for some reason Nick is gonna put his gold in evidence; because his
girlfriend looked at him funny. They got the gold during a drug bust and they
kept the gold on the side. But before that can be discussed, they’ve got a lead
on a drug bust. En-route Nick is an asshole for no reason.
They begin
their raid, Nick gets his eyes on the leader, Garza and pursues him alone,
Garza escapes but Bobby confronts him and shoots him out the window, can’t let
him turn in the gold or something… Nick wakes up but it’s as if time has
stopped around him and blimey, everything is exploding, considering the
manpower they had for this raid, this is surprising, unless all cops are
ineffective or corrupt.
He looks to
the giant vagina in the sky and gets pulled into it, right into a chair in a
white room. Nick soon realises that he’s dead, and he’s told by erm… *checks
wiki* Mildred Proctor that he can either join the RIPD or face a potentially
damaging judgement. Thing is, he was about to put the gold into evidence, and
this was the offence we know of, I don’t think that’s enough to damn you to
hell.
A tour with
RIPD is 100 years, seems excessive when you cannot be lacking for staff, and
it’s their job to find people who’ve escaped judgement and bring them in. Nick
accepts immediately but Mildred tells him there’s no going back to his old
life. Nick gets a tattoo and time for some stupid stuff.
The dead that slip through
the cracks have rotting souls that will cause global warming, the Black Plague
and Bad cell reception… Not quite an ‘aliens killed the dinosaurs’ level
stupid, but it’s in the same ballpark and that’s bad enough!
Nick is
taken into the freaking massive HQ for RIPD Boston division. Quick question,
where are you? No seriously, where are you? Anyway, one of the ‘deados’ escapes
and is quickly taken out by Jeff Bridges, the only one willing to ‘lethal up’
what? They’re all dead? Why wouldn’t you lethal up! Oh because there are rules
and regulations… I so want to get into the bureaucracy of hunting dead people.
Anyway, despite Roy (Bridges) protesting that he’s a one-man show, he’s saddled
up with Nick.
So, why
don’t we have a checklist of things we’re ripping off here? The rookie cop
thing from EVERY buddy-cop drama that isn’t Zootopia, also the whole
organisation that exists purely to hide the existence of a thing from Men in
Black. I'm sure there are others. So they head to Earth via toilet and arrive in a VCR repair shop, so is
the owner of this RIPD or they just OK with it, if the latter, I hope the next
owner when this venture runs out of business approves just as much.
Nick looks
over his own funeral, Roy calls it a disappointing turnout. Looks like half the
precinct has come. Nick tries to go after his girlfriend but hasn’t been told
that in her eyes he doesn’t look like himself anymore, because everyone’s a
prick in this movie. Roy looks like a hot woman and Nick like an old Chinese
guy because funny? My god, that’s creepy, especially given Nick’s attempts to
go after his wife a few minutes ago!
So, turns
out, and what are the odds, that both of them were shot by their partners. Anyway,
Roy has a tip for a possible deado in a building, he’s got Indian Takeaway for
reasons I’m sure won’t be utterly stupid. By following the trail of broken and
dead things a deado leaves in its wake, they find him. And as suspected the
Indian food trick is in fact really f’in stupid. Chase ensues, leading to Nick
finding bits of gold similar to those he stole inside of the deado. Annoyed
with Roy’s non-stop talking (believe me, I know the feeling) Nick throws Roy to
the bus, he loses his hat, which angers Roy.
No time for
that to be a plot point because there’s a surge of activity in Boston and it’s
all hands on deck. They quickly file the gold away and we get to see that in
detail. Nick wants to investigate the gold, and suspects Roy has an informant
that can help them. And he does, and when he feigns ignorance, Nick gives him a
piece of the gold. The intent is to now follow him and find out what it’s
really about, and they’re both intrigued when the informant gives it to Bobby.
Making things worse, he immediately heads to the house of Nick’s widow.
She tells
him about the orange tree and they find the gold underneath it. I’m not
entirely sure why she’s so upset about this, it’s not like he hid a body! They
follow Bobby across town, and we get a funny joke. A vaccum breaks down and
things start going wrong about, it’s clearly a deado, and likely Bobby’s fence.
They managed to corner him but he decides to become that fat man we saw
earlier. The chase continues causing quite a lot of property damage and ends
with an elevator somehow bursting through the roof, with the 3 of them inside
and… what the f*ck!
Anyway
because in spite of all that, the fat guy got away, Nick and Roy have to face
internal affairs… Except they don’t have the budget for it, so they just send a
message down a tube. Well, if it gets the plot moving. So the macguffin I
mentioned earlier, it’s called the Staff or Jericho and can reverse the pathway
to death so that the dead will fall over Earth. They broke it to pieces 3000
years ago and didn’t have the sense to melt the f*cking thing down.
And the
f*cking unfortunate happens, the pair are suspended so we can bring the plot to
a screeching halt. Nick leaves to do something, oh yeah, he’s still going after
his girlfriend… can I just skip this scene. Roy tries to talk some sense into
Nick, which ends in… oh god, not a song, please! Make it stop!
Thankfully,
it’s mercifully short as Nick apologises and they work out there’s a
possibility Bobby is a deado, and is using an artefact to hide the fact. It’s also likely he’s sitting on a piece of
the artefact. Nick’s wife calls Bobby and tells him about the race track
incident, she tells her she shouldn’t be alone and offers to take her for
Lunch. Nick and Roy head to Bobby’s house, Roy uses his feminine whiles to get
in, but Bobby ultimately sees through them, Roy flanks him and finds the gold,
they bring it back to RIPD but that ultimately is part of his plan
He brought
in part of a device to slow the officers down, the other part was brought in by
an assailant earlier, Roy manages to destroy the device, but they got away,
with all the gold. The meet on a roof and begin assembling the mcguffin and
look, it’s a portal in the sky… So, some of Bobby’s goons come to pick up
Nick’s wife. A chase soon ensues with the portals causing massive destruction
that there’s no way in hell the people wouldn’t notice. The RIPD don’t have
neuralisers, Bobby decides to show his true face to Nick’s wife for some reason
whilst the Fat man and his crew attack, but are easily. And we finally see why
Bobby was fascinated with Nick’s wife, the blood of the enemy required to
activate the staff.
So, the
vagina in the sky is reversed, and Nick and Roy shoot their way to the staff.
Roy tries to deactivate the staff whilst Nick and Bobby duke it out. Roy
manages to destroy the staff by pulling a truck that conveniently landed nearby
earlier to land right on top of it. Contrived, you’re not wrong! So, Nick tells
his wife she has to move on and she later wakes up in hospital.
Roy gets a
new hat which might be his old and Nick is now a schoolgirl with braces, which makes
a lot of stuff now even creepier.
So that was
RIPD, is it the worst thing I’ve ever reviewed? No, it’s just really dull and
by the numbers.
The whole
idea of RIPD is like men in Black for dead people, except at least Men in Black
had the ability to make people forget about the rampant destruction going on
around them, even if it was contrived. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are also
more charismatic leads, Ryan and Jeff try but the material is rather dull and
they don’t have a lot to work with
The CGI
isn’t great either.
This movie
gives some rage issues.
Rating 10%
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