R.I.P.D 2: Rise of the Damned (2022)

R.I.P.D 2: Rise of the Damned (2022)

 

2/10

 

Starring

Jeffrey Donovan

Penelope Mitchell

Jake Choi

 

Directed by Paul Leyden

 

There are times when you get this idea to watch something silly, and what comes your way just happens to be R.I.P.D. 2. I never liked the first one. I believe that was one movie Ryan Reynolds did not fit in. The story had a serious edge that sometimes made it seem like the movie took itself more seriously than it needed to.

Lost on anyone will be the idea that a part 2 could actually be a good movie. I knew that wasn’t going to happen, but I did half-expect some comedy and a lot of dullness to get through the day.

This movie has one of those fantasy hell plots, where there’s a crack between hell and Earth, and one of the demons escapes. He reigns in some minions, sending them out to make hell catch humans for him. That’s where Sheriff Roy (Jeffrey Donovan) gets killed, during one of these raids. He appears before the R.I.P.D. and is given the chance to go back to stop the dead who’ve come back and are now hiding in human skin (possessing humans).

Roy takes the job in the hope of getting to see his daughter, who was about to get married when he got killed. The problem is, as we saw in the first movie, when you come back, you’re not in the same body or face. Roy, who joined hoping to reunite with his daughter, can’t see her, even though he desires it more than anything else in the world.

The movie then takes a back seat to some of the worst lines and a plot that seemed so elementary, you’d think it was written as a class project for 10-year-olds. Jake Choi was supposed to be the comic relief, an addition to the comedic pairing of Roy and his partner, a woman who has been in the R.I.P.D. for like 400 years. Jake Choi as comic relief alone is a joke in itself.

The movie lost it the moment the two leads (Donovan and Mitchell) met. Their onscreen pairing was a mismatch. Their partnership felt so set up that Roy always had the edge over someone with more than 400 years’ experience ahead of him. I always wonder why, when the world is on the brink of ending, heaven and the R.I.P.D. aren’t even at the forefront to help their soldiers.

In the end, I got the feeling not to even try watching movies like this ever again. They end up wasting your time and give nothing in return.