R.I.P.D. - 2013

"R.I.P.D." - 2013
Dir. by Robert Schwentke - 1 hr. 36 min.

Official Trailer

by Clayton Hollifield

Yes, "R.I.P.D." is pretty much exactly "Men in Black," except the mentor is the one running his mouth instead of the pupil.  But, there has been probably around six thousand films based around the old cop/young cop dynamic, so it's not as if "MIB" reinvented the wheel.  All it did was jam one of these aforementioned cop movies into a tight container with "Ghostbusters," stirred, and delivered sequels.  So I don't have a problem with "R.I.P.D" doing exactly the same thing.

Nick (Ryan Reynolds) is a Boston policeman with a crisis of conscience: he and his partner, Hayes (Kevin Bacon) have taken some gold from a crime scene, and now Nick doesn't want anything to do with it.  It has to do with his wife, Julia (Stephanie Szostak), and the adoring looks she gives him, which is as good of a reason as any.  Unfortunately, Hayes isn't on board with Nick's plan to come clean, and takes the opportunity to kill him during some chaos on a bust.  On Nick's way to the afterlife, he ends up in an office with an offer: Proctor (Mary-Louise Parker) can give him a letter of recommendation in terms of his eventual fate, but only if he joins the Rest In Peace Department for a term of 100 years.  Nick agrees, and is partnered with an Old West lawman named Roycephus Pulsipher (Jeff Bridges), and together they will hunt down Deados who have escaped from Hell.

As per custom, let's get the good stuff out of the way first.  Whether or not you enjoy "R.I.P.D." largely depends on how much you like Jeff Bridges and his work.  I'm sure Ryan Reynolds has fans (he's got to, right?), and Mary-Louise Parker does too (myself included), but he has the straight role in the film, and her role simply isn't big enough to do more than lift up her own scenes.  I will show up for just about anything Jeff Bridges does, and his goofier version of Rooster Cogburn was a huge part of the reason I wanted to see this film.  Bridges delivers consistently throughout, which makes "R.I.P.D" zip along a bit faster than it probably should.  He's the reason to watch this.  I wish his performance had been in the context of a better film, but Jeff Bridges doing what only Jeff Bridges can do is enough of a consolation.

While I don't hold the comparison to "Men in Black" against "R.I.P.D.," that's also an explicit admission that "R.I.P.D." doesn't have much new or compelling to offer.  I've seen Kevin Bacon play baddies before, and one of the other beasties in the film seems to be a CGI Fat Bastard (from the third Austin Powers film).  There are a couple of good visual scenes - my favorite being the immediate post-death scenes where a character will walk around in a freeze frame of the chaos surrounding them, which means cars and people are hovering in mid-air mid-explosion.  The other good visuals are of the female variety, and since there's only two real female characters in the film, I'll just say that the film is two-for-two instead of getting into specifics.

It's hard to get mad about a film like "R.I.P.D."  It aims to be an hour and a half of popcorn fun, of Jeff Bridges running around like Yosemite Sam and Mary-Louise Parker simmering, and with goofy monsters being dispatched back to the underworld.  To get frustrated that this doesn't deliver more would be to enter the theatre with wildly unrealistic expectations.  There's nothing anywhere to suggest viewers should expect anything new or revolutionary.  "R.I.P.D." is exactly what it purports to be, and it kind of met the low bar that it set for itself.  If you adjust your expectations going in, you can have a good time for an hour and a half.  I'm not disputing for a second that there are better movies all around it, and that you might have a better time at one of them, but it's not going to be the end of the world if you sit through this one instead.

2 / 5 - Theatre

X-Men: First Class - 2011

"X-Men: First Class" - 2011
Dir. by Matthew Vaughn - 2 hrs. 12 min.

Official Trailer

I was not entirely on-board for an X-Men reboot going in.  There are several reasons, chief among them that I already paid for and watched three X-Men movies (with varying results), and just like with the Spider-Man movies, I feel like there's not a good creative reason for a reboot.  Granted, there's been literally thousands of comics books made of these characters, but the entire point of doing movie versions is to cherry-pick those stories and hit a grand-slam every time you commit two hours of film to one of them.  The second you start to dip your toes into sub-excellent material, it's better to wrap things up.  I guess the best way to put it is that if Marvel is going to start re-telling stories they've already made into films, I'm done.  Tobey Maguire is my generation's Spidey for good or ill, and I'm not that interested in starting the hero's journey over again with someone I've never heard of.

Another big source of my hesitation: the trailers didn't do a lot for me.  Honestly, I don't even remember them, which is kind of sad.

So let's get into the things that helped me enjoy this movie.  First, it's more of a soft reboot, in that it serves as a prequel (and one that's set many years back, instead of being a direct prequel with cheaper actors).  That definitely helps deal with seeing different actors playing the characters that have already been established over the other three X-Men movies.  Second, as it turns out, sharp suits, rad cars, and mini-skirts with go-go boots go a long way with me.  I can't stress this enough, we all dress like complete slobs now, and even the teenagers here look sharp as a tack (and in a believable way, too).  It's not just a product of the time, it's the very existence of dress denim as a concept that's the problem.  A little style goes a long way, and "X-Men: First Class" has more than a little style.  Even Kevin Bacon, as the main villain Sebastian Shaw, always cuts a dashing figure, regardless of the evil he's up to.

Another thing that helps here is that the movie has a flawless structure (and realizes it, and then doesn't mess with what's always worked in the X-Men comics), in that the emergence of mutant-kind is really all about the civil rights movement.  Placed in the context of the 1960's in America, and with the viewers having knowledge of everything that's ensued since then, a heavy cloud hangs over the rhetoric exchanged between Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender).  There's always been a comparison that Xavier was Martin Luther King, Jr., and Erik (Magneto) was Malcolm X, but where this movie really succeeds is showing how each man arrived at their philosophy, and not condemning either view.  And it's made clear that the two men achieve more working together than they do separately, which is a statement for modern times if there ever was one.

I won't bother with a plot recap, other than to say this is a version of the original X-Men origin story, explicitly using Cold War tensions to advance the story (which is a million times more interesting than the standard action movie plot of a baddie stealing some virus which will kill mankind).  While there is a good guy/bad guy plot, there's also the matter of whether or not people with very different ideas about how to live can work together in any meaningful way.  This story came together in a believable, tense way.  For a movie that I was nearly completely unexcited to see, I ended up really liking what I saw.  From bringing some much needed fashion-sense to geekdom, to a really great cameo for the folks who have seen the other three X-Men movies, to not being afraid to give voice to both Malcolm and MLK, it all works, and it's a really good movie.

4 / 5 - Theatre