WHEN Kirk Douglas busts into a drowsy little newsroom in “Ace in the Hole,” he declares, “Even for Albuquerque, this is pretty Albuquerque.” And even for a comic-book movie, “Ghost Rider” is pretty comical. It heaves forth $120 million, which means about $5 million was left for visual effects other than Nicolas Cage’s hairpieces.
Cage’s Johnny Blaze is a stunt-jumping biker who, as a kid, sells his soul to Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda) to spare his dad from cancer. So Devil kills Dad in an accident instead and laughs his hearty laugh.
The Devil tells Johnny to forget about his loved ones – “You’re mine, Johnny Blaze!” – so Johnny dumps his girlfriend for her own good. His career in stunts continues, while backstage he spends a lot of time listening to … the Carpenters? Also, Johnny doesn’t drink. Instead he nibbles jelly beans out of a martini glass.
Already the movie is heading off a cliff, and Cage is steering – he personally demanded that the script make him something other than a “bourbon-drinking, chain-smoking badass.” Problem solved! But there’s a reason Superman doesn’t listen to Barbra Streisand. Later, Cage’s flaming ego cooks up more laughs: when we get a glimpse of him shirtless, his CGI-built torso is so ridiculously ripped that the effect is like one of those carnival attractions where you stick your head through the hole in the giant photo of a bodybuilder.
When Blaze tries to get back with his girl, Roxanne (the Cindy Crawford-looking Eva Mendes), the Devil returns to call in his debt: Johnny must track down the Devil Jr., Blackheart (Wes Bentley, looking like a rockabilly Eddie Munster), who wants to take over the family business.
On the plus side, Blaze learns that every sundown he will turn into a Ghost Rider (flaming skull and chopper, imperviousness to bullets, the ability to say “Ah HA HA HA!” in the face of enemies). But when Ghost Rider gets fully fired up, his look doesn’t so much say “hell’s envoy” as “Duraflame” or maybe “sterno from my tenth grade French Club fondue night.” Flame is tricky to do with CGI, but if they had simply hired a guy to follow Cage with one of those butane torches pastry chefs use for créme brulée, the effect could not have been less frightening.
The movie could have been saved, though, if it had cut the puns of the kind that made us all flee “Batman and Robin” (Ghost Rider vows he’s all about “fighting fire with fire”) and devised a series of fiendishly difficult steps for Ghost Rider. Instead, it just kills time before the duel with Blackheart, when Ghosty will ask, “How does it feel to have all that evil inside you?” (I dunno. Ask Trump’s wife.)
Ghost Rider’s tussles with the junior varsity of evil amount to a badminton match before Judgment Day. Fire is only one of the elemental forces with a supernatural frontman: the others are Earth, Wind and Water. These X-Men Lite (Z-Men?) fight Ghost Rider with such diabolical schemes as turning into a puddle (Water) and driving a truck at him (Earth, who gets dispatched with a cry of, “Dirtbag!”). And why is Earth driving a truck? It’s not even a truck made of dirt. As for Wind – a guy who looks like the love child of Bob Marley and a plume of soot – Ghost Rider ties him up with his magical bike chain and spins him like a dreidel with a cry of, “Time to clear the air!”
The fifth element must be Blank Sheet of Paper, because that’s what Mendes is going for. When she reads her lines, she actually seems to be reading. It’s as if the script is being scribbled on cue cards as she speaks. For her next gig, she might try something more in line with her skills, like doing the cover of the Conair box.
Ghost Rider vrooms his chopper up and down a skyscraper for no reason except it looks cool for his wheels o’ fire to rip up the windows; on the roof, he lassos a police helicopter that he wouldn’t have had to worry about on the ground, then lets it go anyway. It’s also not clear who has what powers; Ghost Rider is supposed to be mortal during the day, and we know that Blackheart can kill people by touching them. Instead, Blackheart and Blaze just toss each other against walls for a while.
Instead of being haunted by his uncontrollable Other, Blaze tames his flaming-werewolf side simply by thinking positive thoughts, and the all-powerful contract that Blackheart wants does nothing except weaken him. The movie’s last words are “This is how legends are born.” Make that stillborn, because when the makers of this one pitch the sequel, the only answer is going to be, “Ah HA HA HA!”
GHOST RIDER
Feeble Knievel.
Running time: 114 minutes
Rated PG-13 (horror, violence)
At the E-Walk, the Kips Bay, the Lincoln Square, others