EAAAAHHHH! My Skull's on Fire!

Rating: 1/10 (22 February 2007)

There's a scene in Ghost Rider where Nicolas Cage/Johnny Blaze transmogrifies from sulking-misunderstood leading man into the sulking-misunderstood spawn of Satan. He shrieks in abject horror, disbelief and sulking-misunderstood terror as his flaming skull erupts through his sulking-misunderstood flesh. This scene feels like it goes on and on for hours, this is how I felt throughout the entire film.
As someone who lives vicariously through film, I go out of my way to find the goodness in all movies. Often going to ridiculous extremes to highlight or salvage even the smallest, minuscule bit of minutia to resurrect a disastrous cinematic experience before the fallen countenance of my movie compadres. However calling Ghost Rider a "cookie-cutter" film insults the memory of all drive-in "B-movie" cookie-cutter films that have ever been made everywhere, those in the past and even those that haven't been made yet. Virtually every line in every scene of every frame, with the exception of a flaming skeleton on a motorcycle, has already been rehashed, recycled then regurgitated ad nauseum. Predictable lines of dialog seemingly written by challenged parrots still reverberate through my cerebral cortex like Ichabod Crane as he terrorized villagers in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" causing them to combat those other shocked and stunned portions of my brain that still refuses to accept that I had actually sat through this flaming, fingernails-on-the-chalkboard nightmare. If Ghost Rider were hamburger it would be made from out of expiration lips, utters and eyeballs.
I can just imagine the focus group slash marketing ad-men sitting in their executive board room: Jenkins. What do the kids think is hip, cool and happening these days? Well, motorcycles sir. Motorcycles eh? Good. Yes, I like it. Motorcycles, what else have you got? Well sir skeletons. Skeletons have always been ah, "hip" sir. Skeletons, yes, yes... Hum, I like it. So far so good Jenkins. I like what I'm hearing. Go on. Well sir we could put a skeleton on a motorcycle, its never been done before. Yes, yes... A skeleton *on* a motorcycle, yes, brilliant. Brilliant! Well done here Jenkins. One more thing sir. What is it Jenkins, "run it up the flag pole" as they say. Well our surveys suggest the skeleton needs to be engulfed in flames. WELL DONE! Jenkins. Engulfed in flames, by god you have outdone yourself. Your too kind sir. No, no... I knew hiring my wife's nephew and giving him that corner office was going to pay off, give yourself a bonus. Thank you sir, right away. Right after I'm done stapling and collating all of those copies you asked me to make earlier.
As if this weren't enough, our sulking-misunderstood hero repeats the same, unusual, "grab the girl, spin her around, and then kiss her while she is still disoriented and unable to run away" maneuver that he's done before. Thus repeating the same, clumsy, awkward, uncomfortable and painful to watch kissing scene from "National Treasure" where he did the same thing. This pre-adolescent attempt at sexuality appears to be becoming Cage's unusual calling card ala Arnold Schwarzenegger's "I'll Be Back" phrase that Arnold keeps repeating from film to film. What is Cage trying to say to his audience? That he is challenged by kissing women?
As you are now no doubt aware, I detest this movie with every fiber of my being. It is simply not enough for me to say I hate it. It is simply not possible for me to have more contempt, my contempt level is at "11". This is not film, it is the opposite of film, it is anti-film. It is a black hole of cinematic nothingness into which everything good and decent is sucked in and crushed to bejesus and back. Its as if the film-makers were purposely endeavoring to sicken and irritate my bowels with salmonella disguised as celluloid. Forget water-boarding, forget sleep-deprivation, and forget playing Barny's "I Love You" or Metallica at top volume. Ghost Rider is the only thing Donald Rumsfeld needs to violate the Geneva Convention and be convected of crimes against humanity. For gods sake, someone get the fire extinguisher.