R.I.P.D. (Robert Schwentke, 2013)

Some sad hack will have been sitting in the last chance saloon writing acronyms on napkins and slapped themselves on the back when they discovered two that could be spliced with ease to provide an entire film premise; a police department for the dead. Then all that needed to be done was shoehorn it into the Men in Black template, add a generous splash of Ghostbusters and hey presto, the rest wrote itself.
That may be a trifle tough on Jeff Bridges (doing the old-timer curmudgeonly Tommy Lee Jones one, armed with his tried and tested indecipherable Wild West patter) and Ryan Reynolds (the Will Smith disbelieving and impetuous rookie one), who are still an amiable pair in the midst of the never less than derivative CGI shenanigans and tired gags. But there really is nothing to distinguish it as a film in itself, and the best that can be said is that its box office failure makes a follow-up unlikely.

3/10