With another night gone without a call in the presidential election, and having already had a tentative celebration movie the night before, I was kind of at loose ends last night in terms of what to watch.
I started with the Amazon movie The Vast of Night, about which I've heard good things. But about six minutes of this movie told me that the distinct rhythms of its dialogue, and its tendency to compliment its audience for its ability to keep up, were just not something my mind could handle in its current state of exhaustion and distraction.
So I watched R.I.P.D. instead.
I cannot figure out any way that watching R.I.P.D. is somehow symbolic of being in the middle of an undecided election. So I'll just tell you what I did glean from it.
R.I.P.D. is a pretty hilarious example of the "elevator pitch movie," which I'm defining as a movie whose premise can be easily summarized in the time it takes to ride up in an elevator with an important studio executive. Often these use the "meets" structure. My favorite example of the "meets" structure is actually a TV show, not a movie, and googling it now, I can't even find the name of the show. But it was about a hospital in space, and I always thought it would have been pitched as "ER meets Star Trek." (Both references, I suppose, are a bit dated nowadays.)
"R.I.P.D. is Ghostbusters meets Men in Black," but there's a third comp you can add: Ghost.
Spoilers to follow about all four movies.
The Ghostbusters part is pretty obvious. For starters, it's about specially trained people who try to rid their city (in this case Boston, not New York) of the mischief of ghosts. They themselves are also ghosts, but that's not an important difference. They use special weapons to dispel the ghosts, and much hilarity ensues. In both instances the plot is also moving toward a big rooftop ceremony in which a much larger population of ghosts could be unleashed into the world. The clouds even part and turn into a cyclone of sorts in both movies.
The Men in Black part is also obvious, maybe in part because Men in Black also sort of resembles Ghostbusters. We're introduced to a world behind the world we can see in which agents are defending normal people from a danger that's just out of view, and trying to make sure the normal people don't become aware of anything they are doing. The agents in both cases are a seasoned, crotchety veteran and our surrogate, who is the new recruit. They travel around the city, shake down informats, and end up having skirmishes that get out of control and threaten to blow the lid off the whole thing.
The unexpected comparison, though, is Ghost. In both movies, the protagonist is killed either directly or indirectly by a shady partner who has a shady financial scheme in mind. The ghost protagonist walks around helplessly witnessing the movements of the deceitful partner, especially as he appears to put the moves on the protagonist's grieving girlfriend/widow. The protagonist also tries to communicate with/connect with his grieving girlfriend/widow through a surrogate body, in this case that of an older Chinese man, rather than Whoopi Goldberg.
What does it all add up to?
Two stars.
It's not great. It's not terrible. But it's probably more terrible than great.
And soon, hopefully we'll finally be saying R.I.P.D. -- rest in peace Don, at least to your presidency.
Hey, I found the connection!
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