"R.I.P.D. = MEN IN BLACK + GHOSTBUSTERS"

Picture this scenario - you are hanging out with friends. Everybody is having fun and making jokes, and because you don't want to be left out of all the fun you try so bloody hard to be funny but end up just looking so damn stupid?! Think hard...it must have happened but you just didn't know it at the time (Please God, I hope I am not speaking for myself here). 
Anyway, the afterlife has an enforcement agency, and one may not understand if these eternal officers of the...can I say Law, are being serious or unknowingly trying to be silly, because, as I watched this movie, I found myself twitching my left eye at some scenes which I presume the producers seemed to believe were funny.

They are the officers of the REST IN PEACE DEPARTMENT, R.I.P.D. as you may call them, and they have been indebted with the duty to bring back stowaways otherwise known as 'DEADOS' in the language of the aftermath, who escape back to earth after death.

R.I.P.D. stars Ryan Reynolds (Nick Walker) and Jeff Bridges (Roy Pulsipher)  as two cops dispatched by the otherworldly Rest In Peace Department, to protect and serve the living from an increasingly destructive array of souls who refuse to move peacefully to the other side. 

Veteran sheriff Roy Pulsifer (Bridges) has spent his career with the legendary police force known as R.I.P.D. tracking monstrous spirits who are cleverly disguised as ordinary people. His mission, to arrest and bring to justice a special brand of criminals trying to escape final judgment by hiding among the unsuspecting on Earth. 

On earth, Boston Police Department Detectives Nick Walker (Ryan Reynolds) and Bobby Hayes (Kevin Bacon...bad attempt for a comeback with a silly movie, DUDE) stole a chest full of gold found during a drug bust, and Nick buries his share of the gold in his backyard, intending to use it to create a better life for himself and his wife, Julia. However, he regrets his decision and informs Hayes he intends to return the gold. Later, during a raid on a warehouse, Nick and Hayes get into a shootout with criminals, and Hayes kills Nick to prevent him from returning the gold.

While ascending into the afterlife, Nick is pulled into the office of Mary-Louise Parker (Red, weeds) who plays Mildred Proctor played, director of the Boston division of the Rest In Peace Department (R.I.P.D.), an agency that recruits deceased police officers to patrol the afterlife and capture "Deados", spirits that failed to cross over and return to Earth as monstrous ghosts. Nick agrees to join the R.I.P.D. after Proctor explains that it would stave off a potentially negative final judgment for at least a century. He is placed as a Junior officer under his new partner, Roy Pulsipher, an ex-United States Marshal from the Wild West and veteran R.I.P.D. officer who lived in the 1800s.

Nick learns R.I.P.D. officers are assigned avatars, which is how humans perceive them. Nick's is an elderly Chinese man, Jerry Chen (James Hong) and Roy's is an attractive Russian woman, Opal Pavlenko (Marisa Miller). 

Nick accompanies Roy to the apartment of a suspect, Stanley Nawlicki, who tries to escape and is killed by the duo. Pieces of gold identical to the ones Nick stole are found in Nawlicki's possessions. This makes Nick suspect some kind of conspiracy... and the movie spirals from here!

For no reason at all, I have always hoped for the best for Ryan, son of legendary Hollywood actor, Burt Reynolds, who since his quitting sitcom 'Two guys, a girl, and a pizza place', and his inception into the big screen has featured in movies where he has played an action figure, comic or both. But after all his efforts, Ryan has been struggling to remain relevant in the Hollywood movies, which makes me feel bad for the guy.

Jeff Bridges, on the other hand, son of late comic actor Lloyd Bridges is a veteran in the American movie industry and is being acknowledged to be one of the most respected as a result of successful movies he has played leading roles in. I would have been expecting that the movie RIPD will assist Ryan Reynolds' acting career to finally take a successful turn, going by Jeff Bridges feature in the movie, but I was mistaken, the movie RIPD is dead on arrival!

R.I.P.D. received very negative reviews. The film currently holds a 12% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 60 reviews with the consensus: "It has its moments -- most of them courtesy of Jeff Bridges' rootin' tootin' performance as an undead Wild West sheriff -- but R.I.P.D. is ultimately too dimwitted and formulaic to satisfy (Mehn that's a burn)!" Film critic Roger Moore gave the film one-and-a-half out of four stars, calling it "the worst comic book adaptation since Jonah Hex (A really stupid western movie about dead guys)!" At Metacritic the film received a generally unfavorable rating among critics, but has a mixed reception among the website's audience. Kyle Smith of the New York Post rated the film a half-star out of four, saying, "For a movie that so strenuously rips off Ghostbusters and Men in Black (hmmm...brotha totally read my mind), R.I.P.D. manages to come up with fresh new ways of being absolutely terrible." That's about enough...i can't take it no more. These guys didn't even cut my homeboyz jeff and Ryan some slack!

As of August 12, 2013, R.I.P.D. has grossed $31,970,110 in the United States, plus $24,000,000 internationally, for a combined gross of $55,970,110 and has been labeled a box office bomb, with the opening weekend bringing in less than 10% of the film's $130 million production budget. SMH!!!

Rest In Peace Department known by its acronym R.I.P.D., is a 2013 American supernatural comedy film directed by Robert Schwentke, based on the comic book Rest in Peace Department by Peter M. Lenkov and published by Dark Horse Entertainment.