Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

I didn’t see GHOST RIDER early enough to write any sort of timely review, but I finally caught up with it at an early morning showing at the Plant, a sort of generic dive which is about four minutes from my house. The theater was about half-full, most of the audience made up of eight-to-ten year old boys and their parents. The only other guy I saw who was anywhere near my age who wasn’t there with their kid was a retarded guy in his 40s. He sat directly in front of me, about three rows up.

I’m happy to report that he couldn’t get enough of the movie. Literally. He clapped through about 75% of the movie. If Nic Cage or Ghost Rider was onscreen, this cat was having a party.

I’m not sure I liked it anywhere near that much, but I also didn’t hate it with the same vigor that Harry did. Not by any means. I think it’s a mixed bag. I think Ghost Rider himself is pretty spiffy, and I think Nic Cage looks like he was having fun, something we don’t see enough of from him. I don’t think the film is ever really compelling in the sense of you wanting to see how it will turn out. It’s sort of perfunctory, and some of the fight scenes (that underwater one in particular) don’t make any sense. Even so, I enjoyed little visual flourishes all the way through, and Sam Elliott was about as good as you’d hope playing The Exposition Kid. I think it’s far less successful as a script than DAREDEVIL was, but it’s got just enough cool stuff in it that I refuse to write it off as a total loss.

Here’s a wee bit of news from the folks at IFMagazine:

Here’s the link.

Sean Elliott