Saturday, March 03, 2007

GHOST RIDER - Forecast is for "bad craziness"

When is "bad craziness" not a good thing? When it's so bad, it goes past being crazy and back to bad again. Before we get to the review I should probably explain how psyched I was about seeing GHOST RIDER. What wasn't to like?! I was all set for a popcorn-tastic, camp classic roller-coaster-ride of motorcycle stunts, supernatural bad-asses and cheesy gags. After all, there's no way you can play the following plot without your tongue in your cheek: a kid called Johnny Blaze (!) makes a deal with the devil to save his father from death by cancer only to see the father die in a motorcycle stunt anyways. Years later, Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda with an insanely bouffant blow-dry-job) forces JB (Nic Cage to honour his contract and harvest souls. Oh yeah, and JB has a childhood sweetheart called Roxy (Eva Mendes) reappear on cue as a TV reporter, and Mephistopheles has a son called Blackheart eager to push daddy into early retirement.

If anyone was willing to accept this movie as a light-hearted romp, it was me, but I was sorely disappointed. It's so flat and long-winded and plain dull that you just can't overlook the absurdity of the thing. In the prologue, the kid who plays Cage Jr is wooden. In the main body of the film, Cage and Mendes have no chemistry. Frankly, I was bored.

GHOST RIDER is on release in Egypt, Indonesia, Kuwait, the Philippines, Taiwan, Australia, Malaysia, Qatar, Russia, Singapore, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Mexico, Spain, Turkey, the US, Finland, Belgium, France, Germany, New Zealand, Austria, Bulgaria, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Croatia, Hungary, Brazil, Denmark, the UK and Japan. It opens in Hong Kong next Friday and in Argentina, Portugal and Italy the following week. It opens in the Czech Republic on March 22nd and Israel, the Netherlands and Venezuela the following weekend.

No comments:

Post a Comment