Ghost Rider

(2007) dir. Mark Steven Johnson
viewed: 06/18/07

Man, I go and dis on Nicolas Cage, laughing in his virtual face about his immensely bad choices for movie roles, which I really emphasized after seeing him in the horrible re-make of The Wicker Man (2006), and then seeing trailers for Ghost Rider and Next (2007), which also looks laughable.  And I go and make Ghost Rider a top choice for my little litany of bad horror movies (yes, I know it’s more of a “comic book superhero” movie than a horror film, but it fits in for assumed badness), and then I go and watch it, ready to lap up the oozing badness.  I mean, it got panned and made it from the silver screen to DVD in four months.

But then I go and stick it in and I find out that it’s actually pretty good, low-brow fun, and Cage clearly knows this throughout his performance, playing off humor and archetypes, and even self-referencing his past performances and all sorts of stuff.  This certainly doesn’t legitimize everything he’s done, but you can’t certainly hold this film against him.  It’s pretty entertaining stupid fun.

Now, I never read the comic books, though I often liked the covers, so I don’t have any preconceptions to be blasted to bits as “fans” might have of the character.  The only thing that was clearly off was the age difference between him and his teenage/grown-up love, Roxanne, played by the very striking Eva Mendes, who is in real life 10 years his junior and looks it.  It’s only goofy since they are supposed to be in the same age bracket.

Anyhoo, this flick about a deal with the devil that turns the son of a carnival motorcycle stuntman into the devil’s bounty hunter has some weaknesses in its classic devices…in fact, I was somewhat humming “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” through parts of the beginning.  It’s a classic pretense that feels weak, but then it gets going.  The villains are kind of entertaining, but in some ways perhaps could be low-grade fellows out of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Charmed, though I am only saying that from occasionally skipping past them on the dial.

Still, I have to say, the whole thing is sort of goofy fun, including little allusions to Wild at Heart and Raising Arizona, which ironically enough were part of Cage’s oeuvre when he was still cool and it wasn’t so embarrassing to appreciate him.