No Boo Here

Rating: 5/10 (18 June 2007)

Johnny Blaze (Cage) sells his soul to the devil (Fonda) to help his father and his girl friend (Mendez)
The Ghost Rider is based upon a Marvel Comic character. I never read that one.
This production was very good as far as the CGI went and some auto stunts as well. Nicolas Cage is one of the actors I really enjoy watching, the others being Jack Palance, Patrick McGoohan, and sometimes Jack Nicholson. But, on the whole, there was a big letdown for me.
The movie started too slow with too much time spent on Johnny Blaze's youth before he became the Ghost Rider. The dialogue here suffered too between Johnny and his father (Bret Cullen) and Johnny and Roxanne (Mendez) and Johhny and the Devil (Fonda). Hope they didn't use the dialogue from the comics. In comics the dialogue works, but to actually say the lines in a movie..well, they don't always translate well. OK, forget the Batman comic, TV dialogue.
There was too much watching Ghost Rider with head, arms, legs and bike all aflame. That was okay, but I came to see Nicolas Cage one of the actors I really enjoy watching. When Cage did appear without flames he didn't disappoint. He is always good.
The rest of the cast were fine, stilted dialogue and all. Can't blame them, but the director should have upgraded conversations to present-day give and take. The best dialogue was between adult Johnny Blaze (Cage) and Sam Elliott, the caretaker (of the cemetery). Someone forgot to tell Peter Fonda that this wasn't a play and a little too much soliloquy crept into his lines, but I am being picky here. He was fine. Not often that we see him.
The cops treated the Ghost Rider as Public Enemy Number One and we really didn't see an acknowledgement that the cops realized Ghost Rider was one of the good guys. Maybe Ghost Rider II, eh? And, I do hope Nicolas Cage plays the part again because, as noted, he is one of the actors I really enjoy watching.
Violence: Yes, Sex: No, Nudity: No, Language:No