minor super hero venture

Rating: 5/10 (28 March 2007)

16-year-old boys of all ages will have a grand time with "Ghost Rider," the upteenth movie adaptation of a beloved Marvel Comics series. The rest of us who don't fall into that particular demographic, however, will be left scratching our heads wondering what all the fuss is about.
Johnny Blaze is a death-defying motorcycle stuntman with a passion for The Carpenters who, as a youth, sells his soul to the devil in a desperate bid to prevent his father from dying of cancer. However, as is the Old Boy's wont to do, Satan tricks the hapless youngster by killing the father anyway, leaving Johnny to spend the rest of his life wandering the earth alone and loveless (despite adoration from legions of loyal fans) until he is finally called upon to assume his role as a "ghost rider," a bounty hunter for the devil who turns into a flaming skeletal figure that rides around at night collecting all the bad souls and dragging them kicking and screaming to their destiny in the hellish underworld.
"Ghost Rider" boasts a simplistic good-versus-evil plot line, a stylized, otherworldly look, and a passel of pretty damn cool special effects to keep the fan-boys happy. It also, however, suffers from uneven acting, faulty logic (why, for instance, would a minion of Satan go around battling evildoers and rescuing the innocent?), and a romantic subplot that is bland and tedious enough to serve as a signal for restroom and concession stand breaks for the die-hard action aficionado.
Nicholas Cage may be a trifle long in the tooth at this point to be playing a comic book super hero type, and Eva Mendes is little more than a pallid Lois Lane wannabe as his TV reporter girlfriend, Roxanne Simpson. Luckily, there's some fun to be had at the hands of a couple of old pros who basically walk off with the film: Peter Fonda (looking more and more like his famous dad in his later years) as a suave, glinty-eyed Mephistopheles; and Sam Elliott as an old, enigmatic cemetery caretaker who may be able to help Johnny in his efforts to eradicate evil and free himself from the curse he's under (unfortunately, nothing much is done with Elliott's character except to ride him off into the sunset at the end. A pity). Their performances, along with the high-flying CG graphics, keep the movie from becoming a total loss.