“I did a bare-ass 360 triple back flip in front of 22,000 people. It’s kind of funny, it’s on Youtube, check it out.”

Anthony’s rating: I’d rather watch the 6 O’clock News on the Potato Salad Channel

Anthony’s Review: What the Tartar Sauce did I just watch?!? Critics have been harsh over this belated sequel/reboot/whatever that was, therefore my expectations for bad overdone campy friggin FUN were high; I was EAGER to see an enjoyably bad movie. Like a Peter Jackson pre-Rings total blast (if you’ve never see Dead Alive or Bad Taste, have you even lived?).

But this… this isn’t even campy. Nor fun and much less funny. It’s painful. I mean physically painful. I swear I contracted gout watching this.

Basically, forget about the first Ghost Rider; the only thing they share is Nic Cage. And not the same Nic Cage, but more on that later.

So Johnny Blaze (perfect name for a former porn star running for President) doesn’t wanna be the Ghost Rider anymore. His transformation can happen at any time of day or night, causing him to “flame out.” He meets a priest or something, played by Idris Elba who had the gall to badmouth Thor Ragnarok after this, who explains that the Rider is a former Angel driven insane by demons who captured him and thus became the Spirit of Vengeance. That spirit is possessing Johnny and the priest or something can exorcise him IF Johnny helps him stop the devil who wants to transfer himself into a kid. Because.. reasons, I dunno, I stopped paying attention by then.

There are so many ways this film fails spectacularly that it’s impossible to list them all, but I direct the bulk of my anger toward Cage. This isn’t your typical bad, phoned-in, need-to-pay-back-the-IRS Nicky. This is wig-out Nic Cage quite visibly forcing the wig-outness to 11 then swallowing a can of Columbian coffee grains and washing it down with diesel fuel. It is so bad that I truly, sincerely, and 100% honestly hope someone at this year’s Oscar ceremony calls on him to get up onstage, apologize on his knees, and give his Oscar back — then clean everybody’s shoes with his tongue.

You’d think he was contractually forced to do it and acted it out on screen, but reports suggested Cage loved it so much he wants to do a third. Where he will presumably sit on a pale horse, and Hell will follow with him. God help us all.

The level of my expectations was due to the fact this thing is directed by the two dudes who did Crank. Crank is all sorts of bonkers, throws any sense of logic out the window, and just goes for the gold in terms of a thrill ride. THAT is what I was expecting from them here as well: balls-to-the-walls fun. I don’t mind plot holes so gigantic Elon Musk could fit his entire head through them as long as I’m having a blast. But the only blast was to my brain because the editing and cinematography was probably done by the coked-out ghost of Tony Scott. So much it was all over the place and gave me a headache. They wanted it to look completely different from the previous one, and it does, but it also looks like anything but a movie.

The positive thing about it is that Cage’s “performance” doesn’t clash with the rest of the cast who are equally on a braincell-killing rampage — even Ciaran Hinds who later redeemed himself in my eyes with a role in the gripping Irish series Kin. When the only credible performance comes from Christopher Lambert in a 35-second cameo, you know your film’s got some deep problems. So directors Neveldine and Taylor tackled those problems by making the editing, photography, soundtrack, and special effects just as godawful. It’s a complete mess that I couldn’t nor even wanted to make sense of.

Lots of questions I’d love to ask the producers of this film:

• How did they get a greenlight on THAT?
• How on earth can Nic Cage be even worse than before?
• How many cases of epilepsy did they get from test audiences?

…but my main concern is who the heck edited the theatrical trailer for this film? That guy did SUCH a great job of selling me a completely different film that I fear if Jeff Bezos gets his hands on him, within months he’ll have convinced half the population to change Christmas for Prime Day. Because the very worst sin this film commits is that throughout all the sheer mess that it is, it also manages to be boring. It is the last thing I expected, as well as any movie’s death sentence.

Intermission!

• Christoper Lambert’s tattoo-faced monk is named Methodius. I just needed to mention that.
• Around the half hour mark we see the Devil’s previous incarnations on Earth, like Vlad the Impaler, Joseph Stalin, John Wayne Gacy, and I shit you not Jerry Springer.
• Weak soundtrack choice when the Devil and the kid are kneeling and doing a type of synchronized gyroscopic dance move. A nice polka would have been perfect.
• Eva Mendes gives the best performance by not being in this one.
• Johnny can ride his bike in perfect straight line while wigging out and alternating between human and ghost forms. I can’t drive a car straight if I have an itch on my big toe.
• Hey, it’s Rupert from Ted Lasso! Or is it Rupert from Buffy the Vampire slayer?? Was the Nescafé commericals dude named Rupert too???
• Wait, so the evil henchman’s power is to make things rot? Weird, my fridge has the same properties.
• Poor Vincent Regan, good actor stuck in lousy movies, it took a Netflix anime adaptation to finally give him a role worth his time and talent.
• The peeing fire thing was much funnier when The Kids in the Hall did it in Death Comes to Town a full year before this one came out.