Riding not so high

Dir: Mark Johnson. Starring: Nicholas Cage, Eva Mendes

*Right, hands up who saw the Ghost Rider trailer and thought it looked awful. Po-faced lack of humour? Check. CGI worse than The Reef? Check. Nic Cage’s suspicious hair plugs? Very, very much check. *

But these days, a trailer’s quality bears as much relation to the standard of a movie as the average Times review does; you have to do the opposite of what it says on the tin. 

Cage is Johnny Blaze, a stunt motorcyclist with an uncanny ability to survive accidents. And because he’s the Devil’s bee-atch, he turns into a fiery skeleton with never-quite-specified powers whenever Big Red needs an oddjob done.  

So far, so yawn. So why is it so passable? First off, Cage is a surprising comic talent. His left eyebrow contains more comedic value than wink-wink wankathon The Fantastic Four.  

More importantly, director Mark Johnson knows that people see superhero flicks for brain-easy wowsers. There are gawp-worthy graphics, which are nigh-on impossible in a post-LOTR world. For goodness sake, there’s a horse made of fire. Without dropping acid at Cineworld (and I know the manager, he won’t approve), this is as fun as CGI gets. 

Plus there’s more emphasis given to movie-making than to continuity, which is great because (a) it makes it far more fun, and (b) it leads to hilariously massive plot holes. People’s powers come and go. Nic Cage is supposed to be attractive. And a major character literally vanishes on screen for no reason whatsoever.  

I don’t want to give Ghost Rider credit above its station; it’s a revelation compared to the trailer, but it’s no Blade Trinity as far as knockabout superhero fun goes.  

There’s a fair few shits and giggles to squeeze out of the film, but if you’ve got your irony sensors on full waggle, there’s nothing more to glean than there is from the trailer.

Andrew Mickel