Yee-haw?

Rating: 3/10 (11 May 2019)

I mean, 'Ghost Rider (2007)' is coherent - in the most liberal sense of the word - but it just keeps making choices that are questionable at best. It sticks so incredibly close to the 'early-2000s superhero' formula that you'd swear it was at least five years older than it is. It also thinks it's so darn cool - though, this is probably par for the course with a film about a motorcycle-riding stunt-guy who has a flaming skull for a head. When you think about it, not much of it really makes sense, beat-for-beat, and the story itself just doesn't go anywhere. Don't even get me started on its use of flashbacks. You can't even 'turn your brain off' because the visuals are probably its worst aspect. The only positive about the cinematography is that it's usually in focus, and the editing is so brash that it makes you feel as if your skull really is on fire. The visual effects are somehow so poorly conceived that they usually look like horror-themed Snapchat filters. The acting is hammy but not entertaining - I mean, Nick Cage's intermittent southern drawl just makes him intermittently unintelligible - and most of the main players just seem like they're in it for the pay-check, often clearly reading their lines from just off-screen. The action isn't exciting; it's slow, cumbersome and clumsy. It doesn't help that the eponymous skull-head looks and sounds plain goofy, stumbling about from punk to punk squawking about penance and sometimes making strange pseudo puns ("yee-haw"?). The whole thing occupies this strange space where it simultaneously seems to be trying way too hard and no-where near hard enough. It's not entertaining - like, at all - but it isn't rage-inducing, either. However, it's so poorly made in almost every area that I wouldn't recommend it, even to fans of 'so bad it's good' cinema (because it's not 'so bad it's good', it's 'so bad it's bad'). It doesn't engage on any level, really. Yee-haw? 3/10