The Rider

Many of you think of Valentines day when you think of the month of February but I like to think of it as the month movies go to die. This is the month big time Hollywood puts movies that are turkeys but are under too much pressure under investors to get the thing to the theaters. It's a magic time where week after week we get served crap and I look forward to it each year (I guess I just like to punish myself). Last week was Hannibal Rising but this week I felt was the crown jewel of the crappy February movies, Ghost Rider.


I have to first say that I had low expectations for this movie. I mean, did you see the trailers? Even the trailer bits (the best jokes and images) looked a little lame.

I'll start with the movie's weaknesses. The plot is forced. There are horrible cliches followed after more horrible cliches. Action scenes feel forced and there is no real sense of tension in the most of them. The very very worst thing in this movie is the dialogue. The guy who dubs old kung fu movies could do a better job with dialogue in this movie. There are times i laughed out loud or cringed from how bad the lines in this movie were, especially any scenes with the over the top villains.

But even with all that crap I mentioned the movie still has some redeeming values. I have to give it to the computer animators. Ghost Rider did look very good. They got just about every element of him right so I commend the team for that. It also seemed like the people working on this movie realized that this was going to be a corny movie because they took a lot of their scenes with tongue firmly in the cheek and I think it helped the movie when they recognized that. There are several scenes where it seems everyone realizes how silly the situation is.

So that's what I thought. I'll give it a 4 out of 10. Better than I had feared but still pretty bad.