First Wave Of R.I.P.D. Reviews Are In & They Are Extremely Negative

How R.I.P.D. otherwise spends its time is on wearily familiar old pro/young hot shot macho competitiveness, with Roy holdings his frontier experience over the 21st century neophyte and the latter occasionally surprising the graybeard with his abilities. Bridges rolls the words around in his mouth in all sorts of juicy permutations to fairly amusing effect, just as he gets some decent mileage out of how Roy still hasn't really gotten over the manner of his death, having been eaten by coyotes, his bones been carried off hither and yon. But this is not the stuff of which blockbuster box office returns are made.

On the technical side, there's nothing new here, nor can the film measure up to what's been done visually in this summer's expensive commercial bellyflops. The 3D is here is surpassingly unimpressive and sometimes a distraction.

We’re left with the kind of inept effort that makes you wonder if anyone in Hollywood even likes the medium they spend so much time and money perpetuating. The cast can be forgiven if not excused – their laid-back charm is the only thing between us and total disaster. The rest of RIPD is truly soulless, and if we don’t outright hate it, it’s only because it fails to generate sufficient cause for such passion. That would mean caring about what happens on screen. The filmmakers clearly didn’t, so why should we?

R.I.P.D is bad enough that once it finally comes to an end (with another big action set-piece that destroys most of a city, this time Boston), I felt like I had been sitting in the theater for hours and hours. To my surprise, the movie wasn't even ninety minutes long, but it felt endless. R.I.P.D isn't just bad, as say- RED 2 is. This is the kind of fiasco that seriously damages careers. The big action sequence probably had the studio hoping they'd get another AVENGERS. Well, that's exactly what they've got here- another AVENGERS. Too bad that the AVENGERS movie it's like is not the Marvel Blockbuster, but rather the 1998 flop with Uma Thurman and Ralph Fiennes. That's pretty bad.

Aside from some half-decent CGI work and some legitimately lovely Boston cinematography, there's nothing for me to pull out of my "good news" bag. R.I.P.D. feels like it was made entirely by computers, truth be told, and no amount of tongue-in-cheek wackiness will make a viewer forgive the tiresome plot, the confused narrative, the wheezing banter between the two leads. the sadly perfunctory and wholly unnecessary attempt at "actual emotion" in a movie that's about as heartfelt as a McDonald's Value Meal, and the look on all the actors' faces that all but screams "Gimme my check and get me outta this movie.

Thank heavens — or at least the “Department of Eternal Affairs” — for Jeff Bridges, whose hilariously free-associative performance as a 19th-century frontier marshal-turned-21st-century undead lawman is like an adrenaline shot to the heart of “R.I.P.D.” A generally uninspired mashup of “Ghostbusters” and “Men in Black” (plus a sprinkling of “Big Trouble in Little China”), the film is most notable for having had its obituary written by the press, and even its own studio’s marketing department, well before its release. While the end product still seems all but certain to turn up DOA at this weekend’s box office, the pic itself isn’t quite the calamity some portended, due largely to Bridges, some genuinely impressive visual effects and one of the few running times of the season well under two hours.

For a movie that so strenuously rips off “Ghostbusters” and “Men in Black,” “R.I.P.D.” manages to be come up with fresh new ways of being absolutely terrible. The plot manages to be fully predictable and freakishly bonkers at the same time, seemingly born of the same kind of brainstorming-on-L.S.D. session that must have given us “Howard the Duck.”

Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds headline the 3D supernatural action-adventure R.I.P.D. as two cops dispatched by the otherworldly Rest In Peace Department to protect and serve the living from an increasingly destructive array of souls who refuse to move peacefully to the other side.

Veteran sheriff Roy Pulsifer (Bridges) has spent his career with the legendary police force known as R.I.P.D. tracking monstrous spirits who are cleverly disguised as ordinary people. His mission? To arrest and bring to justice a special brand of criminals trying to escape final judgment by hiding among the unsuspecting on Earth.

Once the wise-cracking Roy is assigned former rising-star detective Nick Walker (Reynolds) as his junior officer, the new partners have to turn grudging respect into top-notch teamwork. When they uncover a plot that could end life as we know it, two of R.I.P.D.’s finest must miraculously restore the cosmic balance...or watch the tunnel to the afterlife begin sending angry souls the very wrong way.

R.I.P.D. is directed by Robert Schwentke (Red) and produced by Neal H. Moritz (Fast & Furious series, I Am Legend), Mike Richardson (Hellboy, Hellboy II: The Golden Army) and Michael Fottrell (Live Free or Die Hard).