Ghost Rider keeps to the spirit of.........Ghost Rider!

Rating: 8/10 (20 February 2007)

I've read reviews from journalists and viewers both giving this movie a lambasting over the past few days and I saw it last night....and it's nowhere near as bad as they make you believe. In fact, it is quite entertaining if you forget you are a logical adult, and realize the fact that absolutely everything on screen is preposterous because it is meant to be. What I can't understand is that some of the same people who reviewed the HULK movie and canned it for trying to be too cerebral when all they wanted was a smashfest (you know who you are) are pol-axing this movie because it is a mindless smashfest. The Ghost Rider comics, especially the early runs were comic book shlock designed to gratify adolescent boys fantasies and guess what... the movie is exactly that! Some are calling this the worst comic adaptation ever and this is ridiculous when stacked against movies like Batman and Robin, Catwoman and even Howard the Duck. If you want to talk about disappointing adaptations of comic books you need go no further than Spiderman 1! Hardcore Spidey fans were bombarded with 12 months of hype and then treated with a plastic looking Green Goblin, a Spiderman shooting webs from his veins, and hit and miss (mostly miss) special effects. Given Ghost Rider's convoluted origins and different treatments given by a bunch of different writers it's hard to imagine Ghost Rider comic fans seeing too much wrong with this.