Toupee Flambee--Ghost Rider Review

Ghost Rider is everything that a movie should be in this day and age. The title matches the key art, making it easy to remember when standing at the ticket line, even for the illiterate. It features a motorcycle with a very loud engine, as well as some helicopters (again, very loud), and a lot of big explosions, all of which handily cover up the conversations that many patrons enjoy having while watching a movie. The exposition scenes are direct and to the point, and recur frequently enough that today's savvy filmgoer can easily reload on concessions without losing the plot. The CGI is just as awesome, dude, on the big screen as it was in the TV ads. Plastic surgery advances seem to be on the verge of offering eternally youthful looks--as soon as they solve that fish lip problem--so audiences don't need to worry that the high school sweethearts played by Nicolas Cage and Eva Mendes appear to be about 10 years apart in age. Most of all, it makes the already excellent trailer for Grindhouse look even more audaciously exciting.

The basic premise is that young stunt motorcycle hotshot Johnny Blaze sells his soul to the devil (Peter Fonda, of course) because Mephistopheles promised to cure his father's cancer. In true "Monkey's Paw" fashion, Mr. M. then cackles evilly while Johnny's dad announces he feels better than ever before dying in a motorcycle accident. Many years and many motorcycle stunts later, the devil calls in Johnny's debt by turning him into a flame-headed avenger. Johnny Blaze gets a sweet new flaming bike and matching flaming whip, and finds out he's the devil's bounty hunter--whenever somebody escapes from hell, he has to bring them back. He also punishes the wicked with his "Penance Stare," so despite his hellish origins he's actually able to do some good in the word.

Mephistopheles isn't the central antagonist, though, it's his son, Blackheart, played by a very focused Wes Bentley, tapping into the same daddy issues that drove him to stardom in American Beauty. Blackheart has found a way to get his hands on a whole bunch of evil, and Ghost Rider has to stop him before he does something besides just stand around talking about how he wishes he could be more evil. Just cackling like his dad apparently doesn't do the trick, though his digitally enhanced voice does seem to be the aural equivalent of garlic breath.

According to the theology of Ghost Rider, it's possible to sell your soul to the devil for the right reasons. Who knew? Apparently not Mephistopheles, who finds himself caught inside one helluva loophole after offering to cure Johnny's dad's cancer, instead of offering Johnny some hot premarital prairie sex with his white sundress-wearing girlfriend. Because of Johnny's purity, he has the power to do both good and evil--sometimes at the same time! Not even Nicolas Cage, resurrecting his best schizophrenia act from Face/Off, can keep track of which side he's on.

"Phoning it in" doesn't even begin to describe the performances of most of the actors, particularly Sam Elliot, who seems so bored by his character than he can barely be bothered to open his mouth. Cage seems to realize that adapter/director Mark Steven Johnson has inadvertently made Johnny a low-level imbecile in many of his scenes, and whenever Cage plays up his character's stupidity the movie sparks to life. Bentley's Juilliard training serves him well, as he makes his evil villain a master class in acting around effects, but poor Mendes is out of her league whenever she has to do anything more than let the light catch on her upthrust cleavage.

To say that Ghost Rider is moronic is to ignore the fact that the devil's primary weapon is confusion. Call good evil, call evil good, call Ghost Rider in either situation, and watch the bodies pile up. Mephistopheles wins no matter what, which should make us happy, or sad. Why not both? So if boredom is thrilling, then Ghost Rider is the best movie ever made. Vroom vroom!