Coyote love: 7 notes on what I remember from R.I.P.D.

1) Too innocuous and forgettable to hate, R.I.P.D. is the perfect amnesic cocktail, a puffball of bad computer-generated cotton candy, a Saturday morning cartoon that reflects the derangement of our globally warmed late summer, too insubstantial to even merit thought, let alone criticism.

2) Kevin Bacon's key line: "Hell can kiss my ass."

3) Jeff Bridges plays Roycephus, the grumpy ghost cornpone law man cowboy (Rooster Cogburn meets Yosemite Sam). Thinking of his death, Roy says in a rare moment of sensitive pathos: "Coyotes made love to my skull."

4) Ryan Reynold's character sums up the movie when he learns that R.I.P.D. stands for the Rest in Peace Department): "I get it. Cute."

5) A key dramatic moment in R.I.P.D: Roycephus loses his cowboy hat.

6) Some day, we may learn that the afterlife of R.I.P.D. is accurate, and what we clearly deserve: when you die, you rise into the heavens over Boston with the 150,000 other people expiring that day like CGI gnats ascending into an immense metaphysical exhaust fan. There you meet a snarky Mary-Louise Parker (Proctor) cracking wise with lines like "I'm here to help you. I know that you can get there" with a painfully obvious bottle of Fresca product placement. The desk-filled heavenly administration with Steely Dan muzak would like to remind you of the Kafkaesque Beetlejuice or Brazil, but it's really just an echo of an echo of an echo of Men in Black 4.  

7) The buddy cops of R.I.P.D. are sent to earth to battle "deados," convenient villainous dead people shamming life who, when unmasked, resemble unsavory drunken buffoons (the movie's delayed-adolescent intended audience?), all teeth, blubber, and bad CGI, various Blutos who provide opportunities for car crashes, shoot-outs, and fat jokes. When Roycephus shoots them, they vanish in a swirl of grey computer-generated mist, like R.I.P.D. vanishing from your brain.