Ghost Rider: Half-Cocked Superhero

If you can avoid Ghost Rider, do so. Unfortunately, I saw it last night, and am wondering if I can make a deal with the Devil to get my time back.

Ghost Rider is Nicholas Cage's long-awaited foray into a comic book film. Everyone knows that he once had the rights to the Superman franchise, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief when he gave them up. Anyway, Cage appears here as Johnny Blaze, "The Ghost Rider," and the results are less than fantastic.

Written and directed by Daredevil's writer/director, Mark Steven Johnson, the only thing that Johnson managed to accomplish was to finally convince the public of what Ben Affleck has been saying for years: Daredevil being a bad movie was not Ben Affleck's fault.

Seriously, the plot sucks. It's typical fare, of course, with the Devil offering a young Johnny Blaze a deal: sign here and I'll cure your father's cancer (but I'll kill him anyway). So, Johnny signs, watches his father die, leaves an uber-hot girlfriend who winds up a reporter that happens to interview an older Johnny Blaze. It's revealed that an old Ghost Rider screwed over the Devil and hid some contract, which the Devil's son and miscreant friends want to find to take over the world, so Johnny Blaze turns into the new Ghost Rider and whoops some ass. No, really, that's all there is to it.

Ghost Rider has no weaknesses. At no time did he seem to be in any sort of mortal danger. He whoops one demon in a few seconds by wrapping him in a flaming chain-whip. He whoops an air demon in a few seconds by spinning his flaming chain-whip really fast, thereby making a tornado and sucking in said air demon. He whoops a water demon in a few seconds by "flaming on" and boiling said water demon. And he whoops the main demon in a minute or two by shooting him with a shotgun, and burning the souls from the contract. No, really, that's all there is to it.

The characters, dialogue, and plot were all half-ass. The love story? Half-ass. The acting? Oh, man, don't get me started. Everything was half-ass. There was even this admittedly cool scene in which the new Ghost Rider, on his kick-ass chopper, and the old Ghost Rider, on his kick-ass horse, ride off to fight the bad guys. Only, the old Ghost Rider disappears after they get there. No fight, no nothing. Just disappears. No, really, that's all there is to it.

No wonder Eva Mendes had a "that's it?" expression on her face the entire movie.