Pretty bad, pretty good, pretty cheesy and sometimes...

Rating: Null/10 (26 March 2007)

...and sometimes incredibly boring. I actually went out to put more butter on my popcorn. Believe me, I didn't miss anything important.
If you had a really low roller-coaster you could call this movie a roller-coaster ride. It goes from bad to worse a lot more often than it rises to anything like good, so don't envision riding on a roller-coaster that has any real high points.
When Walt Disney's animators were just learning their trade, working out the kinks 60 or 70 years ago and more, they were doing a better job than the people who superimposed those demonic faces on the faces of the actors in this movie. Where was the director, or any decision maker, to say, "That looks amateurish, if you can't do it better we'll get somebody who can."? So once you've been subjected to that clownishness, the fire effects just don't dazzle. They probably would, they're pretty good, in a better made film, but here they're dragged down to ordinariness by the rest of the production.
The story was so laughable, and a lot of the acting, too, that I finally started to realize this was supposed to be high camp (or low camp) like the old Get Smart TV show or the Naked Gun movies. But then, no, it turned out they were really trying to make a movie. It was just bad. And then they inserted scenes that dragged along agonizingly, at which point our roller-coaster descended to lows that were actually below ground and rolled up out of them so slowly you thought it'd never, ever make it, ever.
There were some lovely turns by Peter Fonda, Sam Elliott and Donal Logue, although the director suppressed their performances like a novice throwing his weight around. If he'd let these fine actors put a little something into their scenes it would have been an enormous improvement.
It seemed like nobody who had to scream in agony (there's plenty of that) knew how and there were no acting coaches available. The screams and the faces the actors made were laughable and were part of the reason I thought the whole thing was a put-on for a while.
It's just a comic book adaptation. I know. But Aeon Flux and even Elektra were done with so much style and imagination. Couldn't these people have tapped into at least a little of that? Didn't they watch Sin City and see how CGI should really be used?
I'm not saying don't go see this movie. If you're a Ghost Rider fan you'll look beyond most of the lame stuff as much as you can. And no matter who you are, please go ahead and get your free popcorn and drink refills at just about any point in the movie. When you get back you can find out what you missed from the guy in the next seat. If he's not asleep.