Ghost Rider

While looking for this picture (which is laughable in itself) in google images, I noticed there was a variety of opinions on the film: "Ghost Rider is quite disappointing", "Ghost Rider wow it was a great film" and my personal favourite "Ghost Rider So Bad It's Enjoyably Funny".

I didn't go to the movie theatre last night planning to see this movie. But it was the only thing playing around the time that I got there, and, since 300 was sold out, I figured, why the hell not? It could be a laugh.

You don't go into a Nicholas Cage movie expecting to be wowed. Ever. I enjoyed National Treasure, sure, but I didn't walk into the theatre going "hm, I bet this movie is going to be fantastic". Maybe that's why I wasn't disappointed, seeing as my expectations were so very low to begin with. This same phenomenon didn't occur with Ghost Rider.

Going back to the three opinions above, I'd say I fall between the first one and the last one, because I wasn't completely disappointed, and I thought it was funny, but not enough to convince me that it was worth the money.

Essentially, the movie boils down to this: Johnny Blaze sells his soul to the devil (Peter Fonda) to rid his father of terminal cancer. But, once his dad is healthy, the devil kills him in a motorcycle accident. Blaze then grows up into Nicholas Cage, who has apparently become a huge celebrity by making incredible jumps on his motorcycle (we're talking over 20 18-wheelers through fire, etc etc blah blah blah). Once he's completed his super crazy Guinness Book of World Records jump over 6 helicopters with their rotors going and over a distance of a football field, he reconnects with his old flame (ha ha get it? flame??), but then the devil decides to use him to get a contract of 100 souls, which, for some reason, makes him turn into skull-on-fire dude who can transform his motorbike into a chrome monstrosity. So he goes through all the hooplah of becoming Ghost Rider, then meets up with the 4 main evil dudes of the movie, three of whom represent elements, and the main guy, who looks like he stepped out of a My Chemical Romance video (not a compliment), who is revealed to be the son of the devil (no his name is not Damien, sadly). Anyways, the gist of it is that he decides to become the "devil's bounty hunter" and fight these four dudes, while romancing his highschool sweetheart and creeping out his best friend.

The CGI wasn't that great, there was a ridiculous amount of terrible dialogue ("you sure you can keep up?" "no, thank you kid", etc), emo kid had way too much make-up on, water dude was creepy and gross-looking, wind dude looked like a caveman, plot holes, plot holes, plot holes. I ended up laughing for the last hour just because it was so unbelievably camp, and not in a good way.

One last thing: it seems that blouses that button all the way up were of short supply on the set, because Eva Mendes' boobs were popping out the entire movie.