Review

Review Date: 18-February-07
Spoiler Rating: Low
Juju Judgment: Junk

Ghost Rider (2007)

There's a scene towards the end of "Ghost Rider" which caused many folks at my screening to laugh out loud (involving a flaming horse and motorcycle racing side-by-side through the desert leaving a charred iguana in their wake.) If only more of the picture indulged in such outright silliness it might be lovable in a so-bad-it's-good kind of way. Yet "Ghost Rider" doesn't commit itself to camp or drama or action, and consequently it just plain stinks. Writer/director Mark Steven Johnson takes some interesting ideas surrounding an interesting character and pounds them into the dullest of cookie-cutter forms.

For those unacquainted with the Marvel Comics character (like me), the movie starts with the backstory of young Johnny Blaze, son and partner of a carnival motorcycle rider whose fate is decided when the devil (Peter Fonda) pays him a visit. With characteristic guile, ol' Scratch convinces the boy to sign over his soul in return for curing his father's cancer. The deal doesn't go well (obviously), so the brokenhearted Johnny abandons his true love and heads into a future as a daredevil with a suicidal streak. This Johnny is played by Nicolas Cage, who allows his naturally sleepy look to suggest nothing more than a bored star slumming for a paycheck.

Cage looks like goddamn Olivier, however, compared with the other poor souls in this flick. As his long-lost paramour Roxanne, Eva Mendes tries to deflect attention from her inability to act by opening the top seven buttons of her blouses. (If her career theory were true, Dolly would have an Oscar!) It's no excuse that her character and scenes with Johnny are superfluous and unoriginal; Mendes is a nightmare on film. I'm still trying to locate an excuse for the once-promising Wes Bentley, however, who grimaces in pasty make-up and a long black dress as the devil's son bent on world domination or some such thing. His diabolical (or second-generation-diabolical) scheme is a bit muddled on account of the fact it's never fully explained and nobody has any reason to care.

That's the main problem with "Ghost Rider" — other than the unforgivable and repeated use of The Carpenters, the only true sign of Satan on Earth: everything's muddled even when it ought to suck you in. The plot is rife with holes, like stereotypically dimwitted law enforcement arresting Johnny for murders no human could possibly have committed. As far as I can tell, the real story of the Rider lies in how Johnny turns his curse into his calling. When the devil comes to claim him, he becomes a nocturnal creature with a fiery skull, mystical mojo, and a thirst for vengeance on behalf of innocents (which is odd considering the source of his power, but cool nevertheless). This second self takes him over, so the question is, How does he control it and make it a part of his waking self? The movie brushes this off by showing Johnny ripping a single page out of an old book (incidentally, what moron rips pages out of a book?). Presto! He's suddenly in complete control of his newfound destiny, ready to ogle Roxanne's cleavage and face the devil's snot-nosed bastard in an Old West town where the grizzled and infinitely sexier Sam Elliott, in the wise mentor role, leads him. It's sad, I tell you, sad, when a filmmaker believes a bit of religious hokum on top of the same-old same-old warrants the price of a matinee. Despite the overt angling for a sequel, I hope and expect this franchise to ride into oblivion.

Copyright © 2007 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.