journal features

movie review - R.I.P.D.

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Kokubunji, 2021.08.04

Sometimes there are movies that seem to be grown up around the personas of the lead actors. This movie, about cops in the afterlife who chase down ghosts that have escaped damnation, features Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds. And that's all you really need to know.

Well OK, you want more: Uh, Men In Black but with dead gangsters meets .. Ryan Reynolds. The rest, honestly, eludes me, as I found my attention wandering. Such is the price of watching something on a streaming service.

It may strike the reader as odd, but before I sit down to record these capsule reviews, I tend to look them up on IMDB to figure out the names of the cast, what the budget was, etc. This one cost more than $120 million, and I don't know where it went! Right into the two stars' pockets, I suppose? It wasn't on the writing, because then they would have hired someone who knows how to write to engage an audience. It wasn't in the cinematography, because then it wouldn't have been chock full of annoying close-ups, wild swings, and lots of slo-mo.

This thing is currently pulling down a 5.6/10 on IMDB and that's unusually off the mark in my opinion. This is a four/ten. Not recommended.

rand()m quote

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov