Dopey fun

Rating: 5/10 (19 February 2007)

I didn't go to this movie expecting much, really; it looked dopey in the trailers, but that never stopped me before (Torque, etc.). Mostly I went because I read a piece on Friday where Nic Cage ripped Entertainment Weekly a new one, and that made me want to spend $6 to support him regardless of the vehicle he was in.
Ghost Rider is yet another film that owes its existence to the baffling success of the lunk-headed Spiderman films; without Spidey's grotesque box office returns, many superhero movies wouldn't have been greenlighted (greenlit?), and this one probably would have been one of them. Would the world be much worse off for its absence? Not really.
GR follows the story of Johnny Blaze (Cage), a young man who sells his soul to the Devil (Peter Fonda) to save the life of his dad. When the Devil comes to collect years later, he transforms Blaze into the Ghost Rider, a bounty hunter, to hunt down the Devil's enemies, in this case one Blackheart (Wes Bentley), who happens to be the Devil's son. Oh, and thrown in for good measure and eye candy is Johnny's long lost love Roxanne (Eva Mendes).
It's a dopey movie. While nowhere near as mind-numbingly stupid as, say, Ultraviolet, GR seems to understand that it's not Shakespeare (unlike Batman Begins) and wisely never even tries to be anything more than a popcorn flick. Cage is a good choice for an admittedly oddball one-note superhero; his own natural quirkiness makes Blaze a lot more likable (even if the romance with Mendes seems a stretch). Cage walks the line between playing it goofy and playing it too goofy  he never makes fun of the material, and indeed, he seems to embrace it, enjoying himself with it and plainly hoping you'll do the same.
The rest of the casting is fine. Fonda growls and seethes as the devil, and Bentley is acceptable as his even more evil, rebellious son. Donal Logue is well cast as Mack, Blaze's buddy and partner, and Sam Elliot is perfect as a sort of old west mentor to Cage's Ghost Rider. Rounding out (literally) the cast is Eva Mendes, who strikes the same note of bemused sincerity as Cage (she gets the best laugh in the film), and whose cleavage is the source of constant camera attention.
Ghost Rider is dopey fun. I've often said if I have to turn my brain off to enjoy something it's not worth it, but this movie proves a little mindless fun is sometimes just what the doctor ordered. It's only a notch or two above a cartoon, but GR knows that, and revels in it, and because of that, it works. Certainly worth a rental if the weather is prohibiting you from hitting the theaters just now.
February 19, 2007