tek's rating: ¼

R.I.P.D. (PG-13)
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This is based on a comic book that I don't think I've even heard of. It came out in 2013, but I didn't see it until 2018... and honestly, it does not feel like five years since it was in theaters. But whatever. Um, so, I guess it was both a financial and critical failure, but I liked it. I mean, it's not great, but it's not bad, really. Okay, parts of it are kind of bad-ish, but not terrible. Most of it, I'd say, is okay, and parts of it are pretty fun. It has good special effects, and action, and it's fairly amusing. Anyway, it's reminiscent of Men In Black, crossed with... well, some might say "Ghostbusters," but I definitely think there are any number of more apt things to use as the "crossed with" part. Shows like "Brimstone", "G vs E", Reaper, heck, even "The 100 Lives of Black Jack Savage" would all come closer than Ghostbusters.

There are these Boston PD partners, Nick Walker (Ryan Reynolds) and Bobby Hayes (Kevin Bacon), who unexpectedly found some fragments of something made of gold, during their most recent bust. Each of them took some of it, instead of reporting it. Nick just wants to make a better life for himself and his wife, Julia. But he soon reconsiders. He wants to turn in his share of the gold, but tells Hayes to do whatever he wants with his share, without judgement. Then, they both have to go along with a major task force to try to apprehend some big-time criminal. In the midst of the firefight, Hayes kills Nick, to prevent him from turning over the gold to the authorities.

After dying, Nick soon finds himself in some sort of bureaucratic afterlife, where a woman named Mildred Proctor (Mary-Louise Parker) gives him the option of taking his chances with judgement (i.e., whether he'd wind up in Heaven or Hell), or join the R.I.P.D.: the Rest in Peace Department. Nick chooses the latter, and he gets partnered with a guy named Roy Pulsipher (Jeff Bridges), a former Old West lawman, who acts like a loose cannon. Their responsibility is to locate "deados," that is, dead people who slipped through the cracks to remain on Earth instead of facing judgement. They look like normal humans, but they have actually become monsters... and there is a way to reveal their true forms. (That way is cumin. You heard me.) So, Nick and Roy return to Earth to do their job, but to anyone who sees them, they look and sound like different people. (Roy's avatar looks like a female supermodel. Nick's avatar looks like James Hong.) RIPD officers are supposed to apprehend deados and take them to their celestial police station or whatever, but in some cases it may be necessary to "erase" them with special guns. And Roy tends to prefer that method of dealing with them. Anyway, in the course of their first mission together, Nick and Roy uncover an apocalyptic plot, which they have to stop. Beyond that, I don't want to spoil any details of the story.

So, a lot of the movie is redonkulous, but like I said... kind of fun.


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