Ghost Rider (’07 review)

3 out of 5

Since all of the mainstream Marvel properties like X-Men, Spider-Man and Hulk have been snagged up, film studios are really reaching into the dregs of Marvel’s back catalogue of superheroes to make new films.  Hence, Ghost Rider starring Nicholas Cage.  As a bona-fide comic book geek, and even a card-carrying Marvel Zombie to boot, I really have no freakin clue about who or what Ghost Rider is.  And, after viewing this film, I really still have no idea who he is.  However, the movie is enjoyable in a campy way, the FX are good, and the actors seem to be having a good time of it.  It helps a lot that the film recognizes how silly the whole thing is, so you can have fun.  It is a movie about a flaming skeleton ridding a motorcycle, after all. 

It doesn’t start out as flaming skeleton on motorcycle, though, because it takes a good, long while to get to that point.  Ghost Rider definitely has pacing problems, the movie just shy of 2 hours and it’s a lonnnngggg just shy of 2 hours.  Heck, you don’t even see the cool transformation from human to flaming skeleton until about 40 minutes into it.  A lot of the before stuff feels like preamble the movie didn’t need, but it manages to somehow be watchable. 

The film starts with Young Johnny Blaze (Matt Long), a member of the father/son daredevil motorcycle stunt team.  When Young Blaze finds out that dear old dad is going to be dead by cancer soon, he enters into a deal with the Devil (played by a detectably evil Peter Fonda).  In exchange for dad’s life, Blaze has to become the Ghost Rider, Satan’s bounty-hunter.  Soon Blaze is all grown up as a weirdly, scenery-chewing Nicolas Cage. 

Cage’s performance is totally unrestrained.  Comparing this to other strange Nicolas Cage performances, this’ll rank up there as one of the weirder ones.  The guy eats jellybeans out of a martini glass and listens to the Carpenters before his death-defying jumps.  His ticks are intentionally quirky, but somehow not annoyingly so.  When Cage first transforms into Ghost Rider, check out his insane laughing/ crying / screaming jag that he does.  This is a performance without a roadmap, but still fun to watch. 

The beautiful Eva Mendes is in the movie as a news reporter and Ghost Rider’s love interest.  While her character is sadly underwritten, Mendes manages to wring out some sympathy and be a pretty likable comedic heroine due to an abundance of pouting.  Any chick that understands her love periodically turns into a flaming skeleton on fire is definitely a keeper. 

Ghost Rider’s job is to track down Blackheart (Wes Bentley, in a somewhat rote performance), an escaped demon.  Blackheart has several baddies who assist him in his evil doings over the course of the film.  These hench-demons are all based on elements like earth, water and wind.  Despite the cool production design and the particularly nasty way that they are introduced, the demons unfortunately go out like punks after a short amount of sceentime.  Ghost Rider defeats these evil spirits by either moving his chain around really, really fast, or, in one case, by simply just yelling at them. 

What makes all these somewhat awkward plot turns acceptable is that the movie is definitely having some fun, and its infectious spirit eventually rubs off on the audience.  Probably the coolest and most enjoyable moment comes from when Ghost Rider first makes his escape and the cops start chasing him down. So Ghost Rider, being the X-treme spirit of vengeance he is, flips them off and then drives his motorcycle straight up the side of a building. When Ghost Rider ends up on a rooftop and a police helicopter ends up beside him, Ghost Rider throws his chain around the helicopter, pulls it up close to his flaming skull, and then growls “Stop. Pissing.  Me. Off.”  Shades of Batman Begins permeate the cops-chasing-the-good-guy scene, but its passable because Rider isn’t the most original movie ever. 

Speaking of “not all that original” there are numerous moments in here that I could sense were ripped out of Terminator 2: Judgment Day.  The aforementioned helicopter scene is like the “Get Out” scene with the T-1000.  When Ghost Rider steals a piece of leather clothing from an antagonist that scene is also a similar to a moment from the beginning of Terminator.  There’s even the T-1000 style “finger wagging” joke after the monster gets beat up, and even a climatic sequence where the bad guy gets blown away with a shotgun and slowly reforms!  Yes, it sounds like I’m harping, I know, but if you know Terminator 2, as evidently writer/ director Mark Steven Johnson does, you can see the same scenes ripped off. 

But even with the taint of been there, done that, Ghost Rider manages to elevate itself into something more.  Not much more, sure, but it comes together in a zany, wacky way.  It shouldn’t work, and as a drama it really doesn’t work, but as a strange, cheeseball action movie, it does.  If you want to see a flick about a skeleton on fire that rides a motorcycle, and you walk into Ghost Rider, you’re gonna get what you want.  If that sounds appealing to you, then see this movie.