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 Devilishly deranged Nicolas Cage gets all hot and bothered with co-star Eva Mendes in Ghost Rider, which is better than Daredevil but will do nothing to boost Cage’s post Oscar-win career. |
If you thought it was a bonehead move for Nicolas Cage to star in a superhero movie from the director of Daredevil, you’d be half right.
It is literally that, in that he’s playing Ghost Rider, the skull-headed Marvel Comics character who turns the tables on the Devil after selling his soul to become Old Nick’s motorpsycho errand boy.
But though the movie is every bit as ludicrous as you’d expect, Ghost Rider is (a) better than Daredevil, small praise though that is, and (b) not exactly a comedown for a guy who wore a bear suit in his last movie, The Wicker Man. (FYI, all you who thought Cuba Gooding Jr. had the worst post-Oscar career.)
In fact, Ghost Rider is strangely reminiscent of the movies Nicolas Cage did before he won an Oscar, his era of “crazy-face” acting in movies such as Vampire’s Kiss. He doesn’t eat a cockroach in this one, but he does play The Carpenters’ ditty Superstar on an endless loop, swills jelly-beans out of martini glasses, lapses into an involuntary Elvis accent and, yes, makes crazy faces while watching funny chimp videos.
I’m not sure if the Ghost Rider canon makes allowances for a protagonist who’s more of a maniac in human form than when he’s a vigilante skeleton engulfed in flames, but that’s the kind of enthusiasm you get when a guy who actually named his kid Kal-El gets to go comic book.
Ghost Rider is the kind of movie where everybody has an evil laugh, including the hero, and where you can tell people who are into it (Cage, Wes Bentley, Sam Elliott) from the people who aren’t (Peter Fonda, Eva Mendes) by the feeling they put into their cheesy lines. Fonda in particular, as the Devil no less, acts as if he had to be woken up just before reciting his lines.
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Cage plays Johnny Blaze, a teenager as we meet him (Matt Long, who looks nothing like Cage), and the son of a legendary bike daredevil (Brett Cullen). He’s in love with Roxanne (Raquel Alessi, who grows up to be a TV reporter, played by Mendes). But their love is never meant to be, as Johnny is hornswoggled by Mephistopheles (Fonda) to become his Ghost Rider in return for curing dad of cancer.
It’s kind of a benchwarmer job as it turns out. Years pass with no Satanic word, during which Johnny becomes a famous daredevil himself, his face bashed in crashes so much it’s come to resemble Nicolas Cage’s. And then the Devil’s son Blackheart (Bentley) shows up with a trio of demons to take over the world from his dad.
So it is that Johnny goes bonehead, turning into Ghost Rider at night in the presence of evil, and burning whole streets and melting cars in his path, (Didn’t the Devil used to prefer working inconspicuously?) You’d think this would be power enough to face Devil Jr., but Ghosty also has the power to kill people by making them look into his eyes and face their lives’ misdeeds all at once (kind of like what Dick Cheney might experience watching The Daily Show).
At nearly two hours, Ghost Rider is a little long for a guilty pleasure.
Nor does it seem particularly ripe with sequel possibilities (once you’ve faced the Devil himself, who’s next? Rupert Murdoch?).
But, hey, with a big enough box office, anything’s possible.