The dead are roaming the Earth … to ruin our cell phone coverage. Good for them. In a comedy where the laughs are few, that part was funny; if only it had intended to be so. Nick (Ryan Reynolds) buys the farm at the hands of greedy partner Hayes (Kevin Bacon). On their last bust, the two split some ill-gotten gold and now Hayes wants it all. Reynolds is sentenced to purgatory working an undead beat (Rest In Peace Department, get it?) because of his dirty cop status in life. Seems even in death, one cannot be separated from Kevin Bacon. :rimshot:
We’ve had such a rollicking time with the M.I.B. premise we decided to morph the idea to the dead and replace Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones with Ryan Reynolds and the corpse of Jeff Bridges. Nick is immediately saddled with partner Roy (Bridges), a remnant from the American West. Bridges is still logging mileage out of his True Grit role. Unfortunately, one has to go back to True Grit to catch the redemptive part of this character. Reynolds is the rookie who thinks he’s the lead. Oh, thank goodness, because after The Heat, I’ve been asking myself, “wouldn’t it be great if there were another reluctant buddy cop pic where both partners assumed the alpha role? Yeah, that would be fantastic.”
The dead don’t damage easy. And they resist arrest like they’re being paid. And when you shoot them, sometimes they disappear in a ball of dust and sometimes they just keep ambling along. And when they’re revealed to be dead, they tend to become aggressive, engorged hideous bullies. None of this is explained. I guess the producers figured, “we told them why there are police for the afterlife. That should be enough.” The real reason is much simpler, of course. When you rip off Men in Black, you assume your audience will know the rules. And thus, just as 
when an alien is revealed in the Will Smith movies, when a dead guy is proven, CGI takes over.
Oh, and to living people, Reynolds and Bridges look like James Hong and Marisa Miller. This is entirely for the effect of getting douchebags to catcall at Jeff Bridges. Why the cops naturally see through the veil with one another, but are stymied by the other dead people is another lack of explanation. Not that I needed or cared for one.
The dead are often revealed through cue-card questioning involving hypotheticals with the elements of a holiday, a family gathering and Indian food. I liked this bit of quirkiness of this bit, but it, too, struck me as very M.I.B. And it made me look up the writing team of David Dobkin, Phil Hay & Matt Manfredi. Dobkin’s mediocrity is well known, having directed Wedding Crashers, Fred Clause and The Change-Up. Hay and Manfredi, however, are the writing team that gave us Clash of the Titans, Æon Flux and The Tuxedo. Wow. I’m sorry, but how does this team keep getting work? How do you justify that? Every.single.film your team has penned is a writing disaster. It can’t even boast being unique. And neither can R.I.P.D. I like you, Ryan, but your agent needs to start filtering.
Nick the cop endures fatal blow
Now after death he’s a ghost-catching pro
What is this life?
Is there joy or strife?
Wouldn’t we all like to know.
Rated PG-13, 96 Minutes
D: Robert Schwentke
W: David Dobkin, Phil Hay & Matt Manfredi
Genre: Men In Black not in black
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Those who can love even a dead Ryan Reynolds
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Those who don’t even like a living Jeff Bridges
