Movie lacks depth, intellectual heft and ambition Ripping ‘R.I.P.D.’

By Roger Moore

McClatchy Newspapers

Jeff Bridges collects a big paycheck but burns through a good chunk of his reservoir of Oscar-winning good will with “R.I.P.D.,” the worst comic-book adaptation since “Jonah Hex.”

I’d say he drags Ryan Reynolds down with him, but Reynolds is an old hand at mediocre movies adapted from that medium. As Nick, he’s a bland and generic Boston cop — morally tested by temptation, murdered by his immoral partner (Kevin Bacon).

It’s Bridges, doing a sort of Wild Bill-Rooster Cogburn-by-way-of-The Dude, who sticks his neck out. He’s a long-dead Old West lawman named Roy who is Nick’s new partner in the Rest in Peace Department — dead cops who get to redeem their reps, post mortem, by keeping the Evil Dead in their place.

And as faintly amusing and reminiscent of Tommy Lee Jones’ “Men in Black” turn as this might be, there’s no way these two smart guys didn’t see this was piffle on the page. Whatever “RED” and “Flightplan” director Robert Schwentke might have promised, this is a movie with no depth, no intellectual heft and zero ambition. There’s not an original thought, action, character or situation in between the big, expensive and generic effects.

Good comic-book movies have scripts that simply use them as a launching pad to something deeper. Bad comic-book movies showcase the shortcomings of that medium — broad, “colorful” characters in inane stories where their occasional one-liner doesn’t lift this junk to literature.

A little “Ghost,” a lot of “Men in Black,” “R.I.P.D.” has Mary-Louise Parker as the Proctor of the Afterlife, the station chief who pairs up partners and gives these guys their marching orders. Keep the “Dead-Os” — MIB-like monster people — from returning to Earth and taking over.

The cops have appropriate weapons. The living can see them, just not in their former guises. So Roy looks like bombshell blond Marissa Miller, and Nick can never convince his widow (Stephanie Szostak) that he’s not the Chinese character actor James Hong. More should have been done with that.

Roy is a trigger-happy gunslinger “willin’ to lethal up” when the need occurs. Nick just struggles to adjust to being nearly indestructible, but able to feel the pain of plummeting from great heights and getting hit by a truck.