R.I.P.D

Trailer- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X07xNrVd7DU

Imagine if Men in Black but instead of aliens it was characterless undead monsters they were chasing. Now remove wise-cracking Will Smith and the rest of the stuff that made Men In Black such a success and you have R.I.P.D.

R.I.P.D starts with Ryan Reynolds dying only to be recruited in the afterlife by the Rest In Peace Department who hunt down people that for some unexplained reason have died but have now become monsters. It starts off quite strong; its an interesting and fun enough premise and when we're introduced to Jeff Bridges, his cartoon character cowboy sidekick, it looks like there'll be laughs a plenty.

Everything remotely funny is given away in the trailer unfortunately like the reveal of what they look like to other people. There were awful moments of silence after they tried to pull off funny dialogue as if they expected the audience to be rolling around laughing in the aisles unable to catch their breath.

I think the film-makers expected humour to come from the monsters themselves just by their gross appearance but I didn't see why a monster looking a bit disgusting is a big laughing point. By that logic the Resident Evil games would have people giggling uncontrollably through them.

The biggest surprise was that Kevin Bacon was in the film as the main bad guy. His character does an alright enough job at being a villain but it's kind of like he doesn't really care. It almost seems like it might've just been a pay-cheque-job for him.

If you are curious about the film it has some parts that sort of work. It has big smashy action scenes and the relationship between Ryan Reynolds's character and his still alive ladyfriend gives the film at least a slight backbone to stop it being totally stupid and unwatchable.

I can imagine much younger people enjoying this- 12-13 year-olds I mean. They'll like the gross-ness and the level of humour more but I get the feeling the film wasn't supposed to be solely targeted for them. There's jokes about coyotes making love to a corpse for example- it's not PG.

It looks like a fun little film from the trailer and synopsis but is sadly very disappointing.

5/10