Ghost Rider Review

If you mixed Goethe’s “Faust” with the ballad of Evil Knievel, you’d have “Ghost Rider,” a lame, superhero flick that answers the question: What if the devil pimped my ride?

The second consecutive Nicolas Cage vehicle (no pun intended) not screened for the press, the film is based on a Marvel comic book I found too lowbrow when I was about 12 years-old. It tells the story of Johnny Blaze (Cage), aka “the devil’s bounty hunter.” During the day, Johnny is a “hotshot” stunt motorcycle rider who dresses and talks like an Elvis impersonator, eats jelly beans out of martini glasses and likes to listen to the Carpenters and jump Blackhawk helicopters.

But after Johnny sells his soul to Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda of “Easy Rider”) as a teenager, strange things happen at night. Johnny’s head turns into a flaming skull and his Harley chopper into a motor-sickle from hell. He’s Ghost Rider.

Ghost Rider’s current assignment is to battle Blackheart (Wes Bentley) and his minions Gressil (Laurence Breuls), Wallow (Daniel Fredericksen) and Abigor (Mathew Wilkinson), who look about as threatening as an ’80s Goth band, in order to keep the Contract of Verganza (or something) out of their hands.

All of this is tres confusing for Roxanne Simpson (Eva Mendes sporting plunging necklines), the TV news reporter who used to be Johnny’s girlfriend before he sold his soul.
After Blackheart causes a “biker bar massacre,” we learn that he and the other demons are “fallen angels” who are trying to create a second hell (or something like that).

Written and directed by Mark Steven Johnson (“Daredevil,” “Elektra”), “Ghost Rider” reportedly cost $120 million to make. But the resulting cheesy CGI effects, bad sets and music and mugging by the actors, especially Cage, suggest you spent your life’s savings and ended up with a Yugo. As the caretaker of a cemetery, Sam Elliott looks insufficiently mortified.

“I am speaking to the fire element in me,” says Best Actor Academy Award-winner Cage in one typical scene. “Ghost Rider” has nothing as sublimely silly as the scene in which Cage wanders into a field of beehives in his previous effort, “The Wicker Man.” It’s just terribly boring and dumb.

At one point we learn the bad guys are waiting for the “end of days.” I merely yearned for the end of movie.