BEFORE: Well, I've seen men dress up in costume like dictators, and ordinary people dress in costume like superheroes, so that must mean that Halloween is right around the corner. I finally tracked down some bulk candy, because I want to be neighborly without breaking the bank - remember when every supermarket and drug-store sold big bags of candy for the budget-conscious? I had to go to THREE places before I found a "seasonal" aisle, and I live in a major metropolis! Anyway, I hope kids still like Tootsie Rolls and Dum-Dum Pops.
Linking from "Kick-Ass 2", Chloe Grace-Moretz was also in the 2005 remake of "The Amityville Horror" with Ryan Reynolds. I haven't seen that film, or the original - I'll be discussing the horror films I still haven't seen tomorrow.
AFTER: I wonder if the Rhode Island Police Department wondered why someone was releasing a movie about them...
This must be one of those things that seemed like a great idea at the time - let's take the main plotline from "Ghost" (dead man tries to contact wife and solve his own murder) and set it against the backdrop of "Ghostbusters" (dead spirits rise up, try to take over the world) and throw in a fair amount of "Men in Black" (hot-headed rookie teams up with grizzled veteran to work for a cosmic agency and blast weird-looking creatures). Piece it all together, and you've got - a big pile of warmed-over junk. It just goes to show, you can't make films by committee, (or by rolling a set of dice with plot elements on them) and things need to be more than their taglines suggest.
But let's be fair - from the credits I surmise this is based on a comic-book, like "Kick-Ass", and I hear that sort of thing is all the rage these days. After "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", "300", "The Walking Dead" and "Men in Black" all hit big, I'm guessing nearly every comic-book, small or large, got optioned for movie rights at some point, and we're still seeing the effects of that play out at the box office.
When I lived in Brooklyn, my upstairs neighbor was a screenwriter, he co-wrote "Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight" and later "Kung Fu Panda", I think - but he also wrote a show on Fox called "Brimstone" - great show, with the same concept. The hero had to track down dead souls that had escaped from hell and blast them back there, the number he had to recapture being roughly equal to the number of episodes needed for syndication. The only difference in "R.I.P.D." is that the hero's working for God and not the Devil.
I think my problems start when a filmmaker starts telling me how the universe works - it's run like a corporation, or it's set up like a police station. Is this really a better concept than the old model, with the clouds and haloes, and everyone plays the harp? I mean, no one really knows how the system works, or for that matter whether there's a system at all. So if you start telling me how the afterlife works, like that horrible film "What Dreams May Come", to me you're just as bad as any of our made-up organized religions, you're just doing it for entertainment's sake in addition to profit.
I forgot last night to talk about weird accents - Jim Carrey did one in "Kick-Ass 2" that may have been connected to him changing the shape of his face to look all bulked-up, or related to the strange fake teeth he was sporting. Jeff Bridges made a strange decision here, to talk like Wilford Brimley with his mouth full, to play someone who lived in the 1800's - was this because they had bad dentistry back then? This film is set in Boston - which is great, but then how did the Old West lawman end up there?
Also starring Jeff Bridges (last seen in "Heaven's Gate"), Kevin Bacon (last seen in "The River Wild"), Mary-Louise Parker (last seen in "RED"), Stephanie Szostak (last seen in "Iron Man 3"), James Hong, Marisa Miller, Mike O'Malley, with a cameo from Larry Joe Campbell.
RATING: 3 out of 10 Fenway franks
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