You have to admire Ryan Reynolds. Anyone with as many crappy comic book movies on their resume as him would have given up by now, but I guess the actor is still looking for his Chris Evans moment. After all, Evans spent years in the wilderness of comic book movies as an investment to find his Captain America role.
Sadly, R.I.P.D. was another misfire. What could have been cool and funny like Ghostbusters or Men in Black is comparatively derivative and overly elaborate for what should have been a simple story of good ghosts who chase bad ghosts, a kind of supernatural Training Day, if you will. Instead, we get solid actors like Robert Knepper and Kevin Bacon being turned into silly looking CG monsters, a lot of uncharacteristic mugging from Jeff Bridges, and Mary Louise Parker trying to play the stern police captain in white go-go boots with an attitude that’s either bitter resentment about her casting, or her just playing along for the payday.
In an added bit of kizmit, R.I.P.D. opened the same weekend as RED 2, the sequel to another film directed by R.I.P.D. helmer Robert Schwentke. Both failed miserably because the filmmakers forgot one thing: you can bring all the ingredients together that you want, but you still have to cook them into something edible.