.: Roberts' Reviews - Movie Reviews :.

Fantastic Four. X-Men. Spider-Man. Superman. Daredevil. Batman. Hellboy. The Hulk.

The past few years Hollywood has dipped their money grabbing hands into the comic book hero cookie jar and have pulled out pure chocolate chip glory. From the more popular and well known characters such as Spider-Man to the obscure independent titles like Constantine and Spawn, it seems like every month a new title is being released to the masses. And due to the built-in audience these characters bring with them like traveling luggage, it almost guarantees the studio a strong opening week-end no matter how good or inferior the product.

This month's release is Marvel Comic's Ghost Rider which stars Academy Award winner Nicolas Cage as the Johnny Blaze by day - Ghost Rider by night crime fighter.

Ghost Rider might be a little more obscure for the casual comic book character fan so let me get you caught up to speed on the skeletal hot-head.

Johnny Blaze was a young hot shot motorcycle stunt man with his father when he makes a deal to sell his soul to the devil, Mephistopheles (played in the film by Peter Fonda) in an effort to save his fathers life. Johnny later finds that the deal has more side effects than prescription medicine for hair loss. For "in the darkness, in the presence of evil, the Rider takes over", transforming Blaze into a skeletal beast with bones and skull afire that rides a hell bent pimped out motorcycle that would give the guys on American Chopper an erection.

The evil villain in the film is none other than Blackheart (Wes Bentley), son of Mephistopheles, who looks to overpower his father and turn our world into a hell on earth. Think of it as if someone from Hell was a designer on Trading Spaces.

In an effort to bring his bleak and death sucking vision to us unassuming humans, Blackheart solicits the aide of three interesting but otherwise useless supernatural beings representing the elements of earth, wind and fire (Great! Now I can't get Let's Groove outta me head!).

Of course, complicating matters is Blaze's old flame Roxanne Simpson (Eva Mendes). Simpson is now a local reporter and she and her cleavage (which I might add should have their own listing in the credits as they transfixed my eyes more than any of the characters that graced the films running time) just happen to be executing a bit on Johnny Blaze when things start to go the way of Hades. As this is a comic book movie, there is no doubt that Roxanne will be used against our flaming skull hero in some manner before the story comes to a close and director Mark Steven Johnson who went from Simon Birch to Daredevil and now Ghost Rider, does nothing to deviate from this formulaic plan.

When the sum of all its parts are calculated and reviewed, Ghost Rider barely gets by with a recommendation. Maybe if the film was pre-Spider-man and X-Men, the film might have been more interesting and inventive, but with such a paved path already laid, Ghost Rider feels like you are walking barefoot on cobblestone.

One of the main successes of any superhero fantasy comes in the form of the villains and it is with these characters that Ghost Rider falls short. Don't get me wrong, the villains are all fascinating and some might even argue terrifying, but they are beat so easily by the Ghost Rider that you don't get a chance to even recognize their powers before they are sent back to wherever it is these beings go after being defeated. I don't think they collectively had a page of lined script before each one is individually eliminated.

That leaves the Blackheart character that is the least interesting and terrifying of the bunch. Wes Bentely looked more like some kind of character from a Dawn of the Dead Saturday Night Live sketch than he did a menacing Lord of the Underworld.

Ghost Rider did have its good points though. Some of the special effects were well done (I do mean 'some' as others seemed too cheesy to be enjoyed) and the camp is played out like Snakes on a Plane from last year where the dialogue and situations are so-bad-its-good.

Nicolas Cage - who was such a huge fan of the comic that he got a Ghost Rider tattoo years before even being considered for the role - looks as if he is having as much fun as a root canal recipient in the lead role. Maybe he should have taken a lesson from Halle Berry who is another Oscar winning actor that looked embarrassed when donning the leather tights for the Superhero film Catwoman.

This leaves Ghost Rider in the middle of the pack when it comes to overall product from a comic book character film production. It is certainly higher than The Punisher and Elektra, but a far cry from the superior X-Men and Spider-Man franchises.