Yesterday I posted the poster for RIPD, a graphic novel movie starring Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges, that I described as “White Men in Black.” Now we have a trailer, and my initial impression still seems accurate. Directed by Robert Schwentke, who previously directed Flightplan, Time Traveler’s Wife, and Red (which Burnsy loves, as he’ll often scream from his stoop at random passersby), it tells of a newly dead police officer played by Ryan Reynolds, who joins the “Rest in Peace Department” (why do I get the sense that coming up with this acronym was where this idea started and ended?), a crew of dead cops who stop other dead folks from… uh… I dunno, taking over the world or something, f*ck you. (“Your job is catching deados, the bad souls that escape judgment,” Mary Louise Parker helpfully explains). He teams up with another dead cop from the cowboy days, played by Jeff Bridges, and they get to use big ol’ guns that are apparently better for shooting dead people, and making them double dead or something, who cares, f*ck you. So yeah, it’s Men in Black, but with ghosts. My only question is how this is opening in July and not January.
There isn’t anything in it that’s particularly funny or compelling or even visually interesting, but every shot is all in your face and center-framed, as if to say “Maybe this was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek? …I dunno, leave me alone.”