By Jake Hirshon
Staff Writer

Film: Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

Grade:F

Five years ago, the cinema world was rocked by the release of “Ghost Rider,” the Nicolas Cage film about fire faced, motorcycle riding skeleton, Johnny Blaze.
Generally despised by critics and mocked by audiences, despite its mildly successful run at the box office, it started a new chapter in Cage’s career. Since then, Cage movies have become a staple of the early months of the year, where studios release the worst movies. While some find Cage’s onslaught of awful films bothersome, I consider Cage season to be a time of celebration.

2011 saw a bountiful harvest, with the release of “Season of the Witch” and “Drive Angry 3D,” and 2012 will be no disappointment. Cage has two films slated for release in the beginning of the year, “Seeking Justice” and the follow up to his magnum opus, “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.” Because “Seeking Justice” has not yet been released, it could technically still be a good movie. Unfortunately, “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance”(GRSV) left the prime stage of a Cage film when it premiered, and people across the world got to start talking about how bad it is.

As soon as I left the theater, my instinct was to giggle with my friends about every horrific detail, practice our dueling Nic Cage impressions, and talk about potential ideas for Ghost Rider 3. But as I started to mock GRSV, it felt strangely empty. It felt as though my job had already been done. At every turn, GRSV feels like it is mocking itself. Every time it would cut to the rider urinating fire, or a priest stuck in a tree, or let Nic Cage ramble while drawn images occupy the screen, I could hear co-directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor yelling “We’re in on the joke too!”

Unfortunately, they’re really not. Their attempt at self-awareness results in a sad, weird, bloated, empty, and above all, boring movie.

Thinking back on the movie, I struggle to remember more than three scenes. I remember a series of decent-looking images, a few basic plot points here and there, some characters, but nothing substantial. I often joke after seeing a bad movie by saying, “Oh it wasn’t even a movie,” but that statement applies all too well to GRSV. It really doesn’t feel like anyone involved is trying to make a movie anyways. Neveldine and Taylor know how to make a movie that is shockingly bad and crazy in somewhat interesting ways. They are famous for their work on the “Crank” movies, which are a staple of any ironic movie marathon. But their action sequences here are forgettable at best, comically awful at worst.

The abundance of Cage mockery has clearly gotten to his head. He rarely lets his performance go off the rails. Sure, when it goes off the rails, it really, really, goes off the rails, but it isn’t enough. He wastes everybody’s time by trying to act like a normal, sane actor would act, which he has never been able to do.

As a whole, the movie is some sort of experience. Certainly not a good one, but an experience all the same. Among the thousands of faults, or crimes depending no how you look at it, the most blaring is the utter laziness glazing the entire production. GRSV will likely make more at the Box Office than all three of Cage’s 2011 films combined, but that isn’t saying much. While I hear plenty of buzz around the watercooler about, “the next terrible Nicolas Cage movie,” it seems America has lost interest in actually paying to see the chaos. But genuinely, despite everything I have against this movie, I recommend seeing it. It is likely the strangest “movie”
that will be released until 2017, when we get the pleasure of “Ghost Rider:The Search for More Money.”