| Product: |
Ghost Rider - Extended Cut (DVD) |
| Date: |
08/04/08 (82 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Not the worst film out there
Disadvantages: Lack of depth to plot or characters
Based on a comic book, Ghost Rider is the story of a man who makes a deal with the devil and is cursed to ride the streets at night working as the devils bounty hunter.
The film shows both young and old versions of Johnny Blaze (The Ghost Rider) and the love of his life Roxanne. These young and old versions aren't children and adults, more young adults and then older adults, so casting could have been difficult. Whilst watching the younger versions I couldn't quite see how young Johnny Blaze, played by Matt Long (first major film role), would grow up to look like Nicolas Cage (The World Trade Centre), but with the aid of a fade in from one face to the other, the transition was sort of acceptable and made you think they perhaps did slightly resemble each other. Young Roxanne was excellently cast, with Raquel Alessi taking on the role, and once I realised that these were the young versions of main characters that would be older for the rest of the film, my immediate thoughts were this girl will be played by Eva Mendes (Hitch) in the older role of her. Sure enough she was and it was excellent casting because the two look a lot alike. The acting was all fine, nothing outstanding was required really but no one gave a particularly weak performance. Character wise again there was nothing outstanding, and much like the comic book characters they were developed from they all felt very two dimensional. Whilst there was nothing particularly irritating about any of them, there were no stand out performances, and I didn't particularly care what happened to any of the characters. Other staple characters were the arch enemies or bad guys, Mephistopheles who was the devil type character, and his nemesis that he needed The Ghost Rider to fight off, Blackheart who came complete with three utterly useless henchmen.
Whilst this film was never going to be an all time classic, it is pretty much what you would expect from a Comic Book movie. Yes the characters and the plot have no depth and lack any particular realism which leaves the viewer uninvolved emotionally, which is bound to let any film down. Obviously a comic book story, a tale of heroes and villains and supernatural powers is never going to be realistic, but it can be done so that the characters themselves have a little depth so that we care enough about them to suspend our logic and believe in the unbelievable for an hour or two. That is not the case with Ghost Rider, and even the aspect that is supposed to portray something all us humans can relate too; love, feels very flat and basic. If the love story fails to reach the viewer, which it did here, then we are left not relating to the characters, and if you don't care what's going to happen to them, then the question you are left with is why bother watching what's happening to them for 114 minutes?
To compare it to other films then the natural comparisons are other comic book adaptations. Whilst I haven't seen any of the Superman films so I can't compare here, I can safely say it didn't compare to the Superman TV show back in the day, where you actually cared about the characters and followed their storylines, with the whole super powers thing being almost a sideline to the story of the characters themselves. Similarly Spiderman was well adapted, and whilst I it's been a while since I saw it and I can't remember clearly, I do remember enjoying it more than this. What I will say, which will perhaps go against the grain, is this is better than Sin City, but that is simply because I felt Sin City was one of the worst films (can it be called a film?) that I've ever seen and it has always bemused me why people (pretend?) to like it. Ghost Rider at least had a plot of some sort, so it's not the worst comic book adaptation out there but it's not far away from being.
Although the film was technically action packed, and special affects galore were displayed, the film never felt action packed. Perhaps because I didn't actually care about any of the action, none of it thrilled me, which just left it all a bit pointless. There were lots of special effects and all were good but special effects alone aren't enough to make a film good.
I didn't hate this and it held my attention well enough on first viewing, although at no point during it did I feel truly entertained. To pass the time if you are bored and it's on the TV then one viewing would be okay but it's not one that I would ever re watch or recommend going out of your way to see.
Summary: Only worth one watch at most
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