Reviews of (Terrible) Movies Based Solely on a 5 to 10 Minute Fight Scene

Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges in R.I.P.D. (Screen shot from http://youtu.be/UGSwWWL-tJo)

This past weekend I was flipping through channels when I noticed a small miracle in process: R.I.P.D. and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter were playing simultaneously. With nothing else to do — and realizing the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity I had in front of me — I decided to try to watch some of both. It wasn’t too long ago that I remember claiming that I could tell that both of these movies would be awful based solely on their incredibly stupid premises and the contents of their trailers, but I never took the time to watch either to find out if my hypothesis was true. Fortunately, I could now test it out.

As luck would have it, I caught R.I.P.D. as it entered its final climatic battle scene and, when I switched over to Vampire Hunter, it was in a similarly “epic” combat scene. Fortune had smiled upon me again. So here are my reviews of R.I.P.D. and Vampire Hunter, based solely on a 5 to 10 minute fight scene.

R.I.P.D.

First thought: Holy shit is that Kevin Bacon? It is Kevin Bacon. Apparently, Kevin Bacon is the bad guy because he is provoking Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges’ characters. I didn’t see that coming. Points for shock value.

Second thought: Wow … this acting is really, really bad, even for Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Bacon. Points lost for Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Bacon.

Unfortunately, nothing about this scene had any value, either. The fighting was poorly choreographed and didn’t make any sense. Kevin Bacon bashes Ryan Reynolds head several times with cinder blocks, and it does seemingly no damage at all. Then, Kevin Bacon gets distracted by some stuff happening in the sky and Ryan Reynolds, who briefly turns into this old Chinese guy (?!?), shoots him in the face and kills (?) him. But I thought everyone was already dead? Is this a special gun that makes dead people already more dead? This is dumb.

If there was one thing that could have saved this scene, it would have been the special effects. Somehow though, they sucked too. They looked about as good as the special effects used in Ghostbusters and all the bad guys looked like they were from Men in Black. Suffice it to say, they hadn’t really updated much.

When I originally watched the trailer for this movie, I remember thinking that might be the worst movie of all time. I can now confirm that it is the worst movie of all time. See for yourself (sorry about the video quality; it was all I could find).

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

First thought: OK, this is already better than R.I.P.D., especially because it is not R.I.P.D.

Second thought: Woah is that … an ax-gun? How do you fire an ax-gun without hurting your hand? Apparent answer: You’re Abraham motherfucking Lincoln.

Vampire Hunter‘s fight choreography was so much better than R.I.P.D. It featured awesome tandem fighting and — this really can’t be overstated because you have to constantly remind yourself how awesome it is — you’re watching Abraham Lincoln kill a bunch of anonymous vampires on top of a moving train. It’s awesome.

But Abraham Lincoln and his partner quickly meet their match in a vampire who looks a lot like Christopher Walken but is not Christopher Walken. This super vampire brings with him some super cheesy dialogue, including, “Why don’t you let him go, Lincoln? Emancipate yourself.” Terrible. This vampire wants to take over the world and also destroy Abraham Lincoln, but he even has more dastardly plans than that. Evil vampire wants to … buh bah bah … destroy Lincoln’s LEGACY.

Thankfully, the talking stops pretty quickly. But then I got confused because clearly there were plot things happening that I should have been aware of, but I started watching Vampire Hunter 85 minutes in. Eventually, Abraham Lincoln kills the head vampire with the very silver that the vampire was looking for and then escapes a fiery train explosion … I think. I can’t say for sure because I stopped watching after that.

Even though the fight scene was pretty sweet, Vampire Hunter didn’t have much else going for it. This movie still clearly sucked. It was better than R.I.P.D., though. But honestly, a pack of wild dogs could take over a Hollywood studio and make a better movie than R.I.P.D.

So what did I learn from all this? Well, I learned that my hypothesis was true. If a movie looks and sounds like it’s terrible, there’s a 99.9 percent chance that it is terrible.

______________________________________________________________________________

Charlie Crespo (@Little_Utopia) is the editor-in-chief of Little Utopia.