Respond to these rapid questions in our R I P D quiz and we will tell you which R I P D character you are. Play it now.
“You need to learn to relax… take some joy in your work,” government agent Tommy Lee Jones deadpans to his rookie partner Will Smith in “Men in Black.” While Smith is freaking out, they happen to be traveling upside down on the roof of a tunnel at around 1,000 miles per hour. It’s funny because director Barry Sonnenfeld, his actors, editors, and special effects crew all understood what they were doing.
“R.I.P.D.” by Robert Schwentke, which aspires to be the new “Men in Black”—a sleek contemporary special effects comedy—has terrible, terrible timing. Jeff Bridges and Mary Louise Parker, who portray deceased cops working in the afterlife version of a police station, are the only accurate timepieces in this adaptation of Peter M. Lenkov’s comic. They have the chops to direct a Howard Hawks screwball comedy, but they’re attempting to give color and snap to dialogue that Hawks would never direct.
Bridges and Parker are entertaining to witness. She is a modernized version of the prim, sassy office brunette from Progressive Insurance ads. He looks like an undead Rooster Cogburn from “True Grit,” with his cowboy cap cocked to the side and his brows, facial hair, 19th-century mullet, and ill-fitting dentures. There are several extreme close-ups of him in the middle of some ridiculous action number, his ratty grey hair flying, his eyes huge and ablaze with mirth, the way they were when he floated under the skirts of bowling valkyrie in “The Big Lebowski”. Images of Jeff Bridges having fun are almost enough to make a film work. “R.I.P.D.” does everything it can to halt him.
But you shouldn’t waste any more time and start this R I P D quiz.
One of the most difficult hybrid genres to carry off is modern special effects comedy. Alongside “Men in Black”, there are a number of fun ones, such as “Gremlins”, “Beetlejuice”, “Ghostbusters” and “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”. “The Mask,” “Jumanji,” “The Addams Family” (again, by Sonnenfeld), and “Pirates of the Caribbean” are among the delightfully mediocre ones. “Baby Geniuses,” “Little Man,” and “Nothing But Trouble,” a Dan Akroyd/Chevy Chase horror-comedy better known for its Digital Underground soundtrack hit than its latex mutants and rotting flesh, are at the bottom of the barrel. “Kung Fu Hustle,” in which Stephen Chow applied Tex Avery cartoon physics to gangster set pieces in the same way Buster Keaton deployed steam locomotives in “The General,” is the closest thing to a masterpiece of the form, with a connection to story, character, setup, and punchline that leavens and propels rather than pummels and overwhelms.
R I P D Quiz
Despite some arresting hyperbolic visuals that deserve an action film with real soul and purpose, “R.I.P.D.” is mostly loud and graceless. It’s simply too generic at heart to support director Schwentke’s delirious anti-gravity camerawork, which includes sidewinding, arcing, snap-zooming, and whip-panning. Time-slice photography allows a virtual camera to explore otherwise still images of explosions and gun battles; cool, in a Discovery Channel sort of manner, but whatever. A scene where Ryan Reynolds—this film’s version of Will Smith’s “Men in Black” character—gets sucked up into the purgatorial police station after being killed in a raid features some of the most seamless cloud effects I’ve seen since the heyday of Industrial Light & Magic’s cloud tank work on “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Poltergeist”. Later on, a supernatural vortex reminded me of the terrifying tempest in Jeff Nichol’s “Take Shelter”. Let’s not even get started on the “Nothing But Trouble”-style CGI malevolent undead characters who flounce and slobber their way through this film.
Also, you will find out which character are you in this R I P D quiz.
How many films can I discuss in a single review? I’m aiming for the record because I don’t want to think about this movie, which mostly punishes thought. It has flashes of brilliance—reminders that we’re dealing with talented people who are either having a poor year or are being forced to submit to creative oversight by executives who should only be trusted with the receipts. But it’s a terrible, terrible picture.
For more personality quizzes check this: Breeding Difficulty Quiz.
