Ghost Rider: The Aftermath

No bike kick.

In fact, everything on my checklist came up negative. Well, I can grant that Ghost Rider was better than Spawn, at least. But not by much.

When the most amusing thing in a movie about a ghost with a flaming skull riding a chopper and killing demons is the lead character's obsession with monkeys and Karen Carpenter, it's safe to say that something went wrong at the most basic level of production. The fights are short and dull when they occur, and for a character who has riding implicit in his name, he is not on that chopper very much.

As plauged by hamminess as Cage's performance is here, I have to at least recognize that he's being faithful to Johnny Blaze after a fashion - the meek, searching Blaze who wants to be redeemed, an iteration of the character that hasn't much been seen since the 1970s. Remember, though, Affleck 'got' Daredevil pretty well, and it didn't elevate his performance as Matt Murdock any. The connection may be the director.

Ghost Rider could have been saved from mediocrity with a good villain. It's the ultimate truism within the superhero genre, but it's one so many filmmakers have a problem with. The villain in Ghost Rider is Blackheart, the evil son of Mephistopheles. Son of the devil, that could be cool, right?

NO.

That's Wes Bentley. Wes Bentley playing the biggest pansy emo demon kid on the block. During the film, my running inner monologue started calling him MyChemicalRomanceHeart. This guy never seems like a palpable threat, not even when he takes out an entire biker bar. Killing people in a bar is always fun to watch, but somehow Ghost Rider makes it laborious.

In the course of minutes, myself and a pair of friends came up with about 21 distinct reasons why Ghost Rider sucked, chief among them that he is not technically a ghost and also does not ride a ghost. I'd love to say that it ventures into so-bad-it's-good territory, but it's really just a painful disappointment. If you must see it, see it on the big screen where the pretty effects will be more worthwhile. But really, just save yourself the trouble.