Brannigan's Law

THE INTRO:

From first glance at the poster on the right, you get a sense of the potential coolness of the Marvel Comics character 'Ghost Rider'. Johnny Blaze goes through some typical comic rigmarole and ends up selling his soul to the devil, and in return must become the devil's collection agent, putting Ralph Josey to shame.
Ghost Rider eventually chafes at the thought of gathering souls for the devil, and decides to opt out of the contract, and seek to be an independent justice and vengeance seeking entrepreneur.
Nicholas Cage is apparently a Ghost Rider fan, so this looked like a positive for the movie and he plays Johnny Blaze.
Eva Mendez plays Blazes' girlfriend, and some old guy plays the devil.

THE REVIEW:

When Ezekiel walked into the valley of the dry bones, and prior to the Lord breathing life into them, he saw more life in those skeletons than we did in the whole Ghost Rider movie. I walked out of the theater disappointed that Nicholas Cage and some movie executives saw fit to take the potentially cool concept of the Ghost Rider and abuse it.
Instead of making a very, very cool movie (as they could have), they made a cornball attempt at a horror/fantasy/comedy genre bomb. This kind of abuse of a good thing is on the level of winning the lottery, lighting the ticket on fire, and using it to light your celebratory cigar.

The plot had the Devil's son try to take power from the Devil, and the Devil use his 'Ghost Rider' to kill his son....so that he could retain control....which was supposed to be better. I won't ruin the ending for you in case you watch it, but I will tell you that it was stupid.
Aside from not explaining the point of supporting characters, the misuse of potentially good characters, cornball lines, and Eva Mendes' terrible oh so terrible acting, there was one lone bright spot in the whole film (aside from the fact that once in a while it looked cool).

The Caretaker. Cool character. Predictable, and obvious without the intended "oh I didn't see that coming"ness, but cool all the same. He was the only character I 'believed' in, and that only lasted until he disappeared into the desert. I mean he could have saved that 'one last change' for later; all he needed was to give Blaze a decent set of directions and that would have been it.

The only thing in the film that was stretched as thin as the plot was Eva Mendes' shirt. For Pete's sake! If you can't possibly stretch the shirt so that you can do up all of the button's, then BUY A SHIRT THAT FITS!!!

CONCLUSION:

So there you have it. I should have read that Nick Cage interview before watching the movie. He says that he wanted it to be funny, and that he wanted the character to be absurd. Well done Nick, well done. If you've seen the previews/commercial, and they look a little goofy... then you have seen a commercial that does its movie justice.

You will probably notice that this review was spotty and without a real feeling of continuity. If that is the case, then know that it was all done as a tribute to how the movie Ghost Rider felt.
In my review, this movie was a real boner (yes, pun intended).