Susan Granger’s review of “Ghost Rider” (Columbia Pictures/Sony)
This pulpy cinematic Marvel comic book is aimed at teenage boys or adult males with rampant cases of arrested development.
Here’s the set-up: when teenage daredevil biker Johnny Blaze (Matt Long), who tours on the carnival circuit with his chain-smoking, cancer-riddled father (Brett Cullen), is offered a chance to save dad from suffering by selling his soul to the duplicitous Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda) – he agrees, giving up his love interest, Roxanne (Racquel Alessi), to ride around the barren landscape, raising havoc.
Skip ahead to the adult Johnny (Nicholas Cage), who gobbles jelly beans (only yellow and red) and listens with rapt attention to music by the Carpenters when he’s not staging arena shows, astonishing crowds by defying death, jumping dozens trucks and a football field full of Black Hawk helicopters. But Johnny’s true mission is to eliminate Blackheart (Wes Bentley), Mephistopheles’ demonic son who is determined to create hell on Earth.
Despite a narrated explanation by gravel-voiced Sam Elliott, none of this makes much sense, nor is it supposed to, I suspect, including the inexplicable reappearance of Roxanne (Eva Mendes) as an inquiring TV reporter who can’t keep her shirt buttoned.
The gimmick is watching Johnny transform back and forth between his human and Ghost Rider form. With his skull aflame, he rides a motorcycle that changes into a fiery weapon of mass destruction. But even this gets tiresome quickly.
Perhaps writer/director Mark Steven Johnson (“Daredevil”) envisioned some sort of Evel Kneivel-meets-Faust concept, but the pyrotechnics took over. Maniacal Nicholas Cage is no Easy Rider, while Eva Mendes survives another cleavage encounter. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Ghost Rider” flames out with a 2. Hopefully, in the next incarnation of this franchise, they’ll go for a Ghost Writer.
