Output Stream of Consciousness

There's always a risk to going to a movie before good, accessible reviews come out. Not Rotten Tomatoes reviews, though; there are few people I would disagree with more than your average newspaper movie reviewer. It was a nice long weekend, though, and comic book movies have been relatively kind to us, overall, though Daredevil and Elektra nearly scarred us for life.

After a semi-cheesy introduction to the legend, the movie starts by following a father and son carnival motorcycle team through to the son's love interest and plans to elope, news of his father's terminal illness and the son's deal with the devil that turned out to be rather less in his own favour as it should.

The Ghost Rider is the devil's bounty hunter, and the devil informs the young Johnny Blaze to expect him to come to collect on the bargain at some point.

Through some horrible aging process over the years, the son grows up to look like Nicholas Cage (I think they should have found someone more like him for the younger years, really *laugh*), still doing stunts, getting more and more daring and elaborate in the stunts, never really sure whether it's his skill... or the bargain.

When the devil's children come loose in the world, the devil comes to collect.

I enjoyed Ghost Rider more than I objectively ought to have enjoyed it, since there were a number of things that were silly in retrospect, but likewise my wife and in-laws really enjoyed it as well. Maybe Nicholas Cage really is that charming; we often enjoy him in movies. Maybe it's that the aftermath of the first night of transformation was so spectacular, or that the effects were great (besides some definite unevenness in the animation of the skull, they were pretty good). Maybe it was all the little touches (blowing out the neon on the "GARAGE" symbol... leaving "RAGE" was cute, or what Johnny Blaze does when surrounded by cops). Maybe giving the devil some comeuppance is fun.

There were definitely some weak points. The relationship with Roxanne was unevenly done, some of the baddie were excessively flat and the explanation for the continued curse at the end was weak.

Still, all in all, a fun romp and I'm at a loss to explain why.

Recommended for semi-mindless fun.