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

National Lampoon's Van Wilder - 2002

"National Lampoon's Van Wilder" - 2002
Dir. by Walt Becker - 1 hr. 32 min.

by Clayton Hollifield

If anyone is going to knock off "Animal House," National Lampoon has more right to do so than anyone else.  Granted, there are many, many years between "Animal House" and "Van Wilder," but it's their own template, so I won't judge them too harshly for following it.  And if you're inclined to these kinds of movies, you can do a lot worse than "Van Wilder."

The titular character, Van Wilder (Ryan Reynolds), is entering his seventh year at Coolidge College, with no prospect of graduation in sight.  Van has put those years to use becoming a benevolent BMOC, using his charm and connections to grease difficult paths for other students.  However, his unusual approach to matriculating means that the student newspaper's editor (Tom Everett Scott) wants a story on Van, and assigns the story to hotshot cutie pie Gwen Pearson (Tara Reid).  Van is more interested in dating Gwen, which incurs the wrath of her boyfriend, pre-med student Richard Bagg (Daniel Cosgrove).  Ultimately, Van is put into a situation where he has to graduate or leave Coolidge without a degree.

Let's get to the good stuff first.  This is very much a "save the house" movie, through and through.  It's a useful comedy plot, because it allows for unmotivated or mired characters to be spurred to action, and because it's a situation that plays out over a fixed amount of time.  It might be the very best stock comedy plot, because it doesn't require a strong antagonist, but does allow weaselly and jerkish characters to do their thing without having to construct a story that props them up as particularly cunning or powerful.  Instead, they merely have to be opportunistic and not at all sympathetic to the hero.  And the hero isn't put in the position of vanquishing (or victimizing) another character, which would be a more complicated morality tale.

In a "save the house" movie, the entire film rises and falls on individual comedic performances.  Ryan Reynolds is a capable lead in comedies (he's pretty good here, even if the film isn't anything spectacular), and it's easy to see why he kept getting motormouth charmer roles after this.  This also might have been one of the very last films before Tara Reid was better known as a train-wreck than as an actress.  Van Wilder's two assistants, played by Kal Penn and Teck Holmes, aren't bad in their supporting roles (particularly Penn).  There are a number of cameos (Erik Estrada, Edie McClurg, Curtis "Booger" Armstrong) that are fun, too.

"National Lampoon's Van Wilder" is a fun movie, even if it's inconsequential and formulaic (which aren't deal-breakers with comedy - performances and building great comedic scenes are far more important).  It's a tough movie to recommend though.  There has been a steady stream of college movies like this one over the last couple of decades, and which ones a viewer is partial to seems to be largely correlated to when that viewer was in college himself, give or take a couple of years.  If you're the right age, "Van Wilder" is a fun way to blow a couple of hours (especially if you're doing so with a few beers or whatever).  If you're not in that age range, it's like Mick Jagger wrote: "Who wants yesterday's papers?"

2 / 5 - TV

Green Lantern - 2011

"Green Lantern" - 2011
Dir. by Martin Campbell - 1 hr. 54 min.

Official Trailer

By Clayton Hollifield

It's not often that a movie completely blows it right off the bat.  And by that, I mean within the first five minutes of the film, "Green Lantern" was completely ruined.  Before we even get to nerdy points of contention like casting, how the costume looks, or how close to the source material the film remains, "Green Lantern" was a piece of burnt toast.  Sure, there are other things along the way that are laughable, violate basic storytelling laws, or are just plain stupid, but to screw the pooch so immediately and vigorously is a rare feat.

I'm not going to recap the plot in detail.  Buy a "Green Lantern" comic (or hit up your library and borrow a book) if you want to know.  Basically, Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) is a pilot who finds a dying alien, who then bestows a ring and green lantern on Jordan.  This turns him into a superhero.  So now you're up to speed.

Back to the problem at hand.  This movie blows both the "journey of a hero" story and sucks all of the joy out of a sci-fi spectacle at the same time.  The opening scene is set on a cosmic scale, explaining who the Green Lantern Corp are, and how the whole thing works.  Well, mystery solved.  Opening the film in this way serves two purposes, neither of them positive ones.  First, it eliminates the sense of wonder that comes when a sci-fi story goes from everyday to cosmic.  "Green Lantern" saves nothing for the wedding night.  One of the principle joys of these kinds of film is the gradual discovery and understanding of a world larger and more spectacular (hopefully) than our own.  But that only work if you keep your legs together, to further the metaphor.  Instead, this film becomes a piece of meat splayed out, served on a platter.  Secondly, when Hal Jordan goes through the inevitable "whoa" phase, he looks like a nimrod because the entire audience is already three paces ahead of him.  Jeez, Hal, we already saw O'a.  Catch up already.

As for the journey of the hero story, the writers (there are four of them credited) apparently thought it would be a good idea to, whenever Hal Jordan aspires to do something more than sit around and be reliable, have women and children start crying.  I wish I could say this happened only once, but I remember a minimum of three times this happened.  That's a hell of a heroic message: anything other than couch surfing will make every one you know weep (and call you a child, which happens at least as frequently).  I began to think that the true heroic tale of this story was not Green Lantern vs. Parallax, but Hal Jordan rising about his awful, manipulative friends and family to make anything out of himself at all.  All the people around Jordan drill him constantly about being irresponsible and a child, which leads to another point: show, don't tell.

"Show, don't tell" is a basic storytelling maxim.  It means that whenever possible, it's better to have things like character traits be explained by actions or scenes than to do it in dialogue.  And when you're dealing with a huge budget, sci-fi, special effects extravaganza like "Green Lantern," you'd think that might be the one area that they'd knock out of the park.  Instead, we get things like Hal's family and friends alternating between berating him and crying over him, extended expository sequences explaining O'a (the home planet of the Green Lantern Corp), how the ring/lantern combo works, and training sequences.  Just way too much talking, and not nearly enough spot on character work.

That's kind of understandable though, since most of the actors don't really do much with what they've got to work with.  Ryan Reynolds was fine, but his love interest, Carol Ferris (Blake Lively), was awful.  She's part of the berating/crying crew, and was a Smurfette to boot (the only other significant female role belonged to Angela Bassett, but she didn't interact with many of the other characters).  To me, when there's only one woman around in a sea of men, her relationship with the star doesn't mean much.  It means that he's the alpha male and she was simply what was available.  If that's not what a filmmaker is trying to imply, then you need more female characters around to turn Carol from the town pump into someone worth pursuing.  It's understandable that Hector Hammond (played by Peter Sarsgaard) would be jealous over Carol and Hal's relationship; short of mail-ordering a bride from Russia, the village's allotment of women has officially been claimed.  It annoys me to no end to have to point this sort of thing out, but it's just another point on a checklist of reasons why this movie was really, really bad.  There are hoes in many area codes, so why not throw a few of them a payday to patch up a plot hole?

I could get into how this movie shamelessly and ineffectively rips off the Star Wars saga at every opportunity, but why beat a dead horse?  For exercise, I suppose.  The special effects were kind of underwhelming.  They bluntly state in the film that the ring can do literally anything that Jordan can imagine, but he doesn't appear to have much of an imagination.  DC Comics is now responsible for two of the worst films I've seen in recent years (this and "Jonah Hex").  Even though the run time wasn't excessive, I got fidgety and bored at several points.  This is the sort of thing that I have a soft spot for, but a bad movie is a bad movie.

1 / 5 - Theatre