R.I.P.D. (2013) *

Directed by:  Robert Schwentke

Starring:  Jeff Bridges, Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Bacon, Mary Louise Parker

R.I.P.D. flies at the screen, but it is still as dead as the people who are members of the R.I.P.D. (Rest In Peace Department).     What is the R.I.P.D.?    They are selected souls who don't have quite enough points to get into heaven, so are required to serve their purgatory as members of this police force that monitors evil souls who have managed to stay on Earth and elude their day of reckoning.    How they did this may have been explained, but I don't recall it.    

R.I.P.D. wants to be like Men In Black in every fiber of its being, but it is not.    There are grotesque monsters and CGI gone haywire, but the difference is in the attitude.    Men In Black kidded itself and had fun with how preposterous it was.     R.I.P.D. is an example of a film where so much is going on that it becomes as boring as a film where nothing is going on.     What can be said for the actors other than that they survived it and will move on to better things?   

The plot involves gold artifacts which will be used by the dastardly evil souls to destroy the Earth, or at least take it over.    Kevin Bacon plays a Boston cop who kills his partner Nick (Reynolds) in order to cover up his plan.    Unbeknownst to Bacon, Nick will be sent back to Earth as a member of the R.I.P.D. to thwart him.    Nick is partnered with Roy (Bridges), a grizzled veteran who in a previous life was an Old West sheriff.    Bridges' mannerisms and gruff speaking voice are not a million miles removed from his Rooster Cogburn in 2010's True Grit.   

The joke (?) is when Nick and Roy are returned to Earth, people will see them as an elderly Chinese man and a hot blonde model type.    Both can not speak directly to the living without their speech coming out garbled, except when the plot absolutely requires them to be understood.     There are no laughs generated from this development.     The filmmakers should've followed Warren Beatty's Heaven Can Wait's lead and simply present Bridges and Reynolds as themselves.    It is better to leave it to us to understand that the living are not actually seeing them.    Since there are no laughs anyway, what difference does it make?

R.I.P.D. is full of chases, CGI violence, and cartoonish characters, with some icky humor thrown in, such as Bridges explaining what happened to his skull after he was killed, as if we really needed to know that.    The actors try to avoid looking adrift, but they are simply just swept up into the morass of nonsense.     Even the tender moments, such as Nick communicating with his wife, are handled clumsily.    R.I.P.D. is full of ugly visuals loudly and relentlessly hurled at you.    How Nick is killed is also presented in a manner which makes you wince.    If there was ever a film that needed to dial down, this is it.