Any movie featuring voiceover from the great Sam Elliott can't be all bad.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I'm sad to report that while the new Marvel Comics adaptation Ghost Rider isn't totally awful, it sure ain't all that good, either. This movie is about as close to a complete waste of time as anything I've seen so far this year, it's only saving grace a few moments of rather hysterical levity and that gravely Texas twang of the aforementioned Elliott.

Other than that I can't imagine who would like watching Ghost Rider. Having never read the book on which it is based I can't comment on how faithful writer/director Mark Steven Johnson's screenplay is but my gut tells me it is about as honest and true to the source material as his handling of Daredevil was. Anyone who actually cares to remember that 2000 disaster knows how much it sucked, and to say this one is almost as rancid shouldn't come as a shock. Truth be told this movie is a borderline disaster, and while it will probably have a great opening weekend it's still going to disappear so fast from the multiplexes people will blink only to open their eyes and discover it long gone.

Johnny Blaze (Nicolas Cage) is a famous motorcycle stuntman with a flair for the dangerously spectacular who has managed to escape death time and time again during his bruising career. Luck? No, not really. He's got a gift, a charmed life that makes one wonder if the guy has an angel looking over his shoulder protecting him from harm.

Make that a devil, the Devil, actually, the superstar athlete making a deal with Mephistopheles (Peter Fonda) as a youth in order to keep his cancer-riddled father from suffering the ravages of the disease. Now, under the cover of darkness and when evil is near, Blaze becomes the Ghost Rider, a fiery skeletal bounty hunter charged with returning escaped souls back to the furnaces of Hell.

Things get ugly when Blackheart (Wes Bentley), Mephistopheles' greedy son, rises out of the bowels of the Earth with plans to tear the souls of all humanity apart. Now, with the aid of a mysterious gravedigger (Elliott) and with the life of his ladylove Roxanne (Eva Mendes) in the balance, Blaze must take control of the demon inside of him and become the human race's hellfire champion. It's almost too much to ask of a man, but even though his soul is lost his heart remains true making this Ghost Rider far from just another minion doing the Devil's bidding.

At just over 100 minutes, Ghost Rider is an agonizingly inert fantasy action adventure without the first idea of what it is. It's too silly to be taken seriously and far too serious to be taken as camp. Johnson can't strike a consistent tone, the film hovering in this weird PG-13 nether-zone making it too violent and horrific for kids yet too sophomoric and juvenile for gore-hungry adults. Worse, the darn thing is boring, taking forever to actually get going and, when it finally does, the results are so laughable and ludicrous a person can only shake their head in shame and wonder what the heck anyone involved with this was actually thinking.

Thankfully, any movie with Nicolas Cage can be guaranteed to have at least one moment of whacked-out lunacy coming completely out of left field. Thankfully, this movie has two. Blaze's first moments waking up after his initial night as Ghost Rider are relatively hysterical, while a scene a few beats later of the character in front of a mirror are a total hoot. They're the moments you remember long after the picture ends, the only true bits of inspiration, both courtesy of a brilliant actor capable of so much more than this.

One has to wonder, though, that after this and The Wicker Man if the gifted Cage has finally and completely sold out for good. Probably not, he was just in World Trade Center, The Weather Man and Matchstick Men after all, but this double-whammy of utter eye-popping crap sure can't help but put the Oscar winner in a 100-watt spotlight of pure shame. Hopefully the paychecks were worth it, because the man may be thought of as one of our greatest living actors that still doesn’t mean he hasn't placed himself at the center of a turgid pit of dreadfulness which is going to be a real challenge to climb out of.

The real culprit here is Johnson. While he showed potential with 1998's moderately successful Simon Birch, after Daredevil you have to wonder why anyone thought it was a good idea to hire the guy to make another comic book adventure. Once more he's done a bang-up job of delivering a stink bomb so rancid audiences will be smelling it for the rest of the year. The film is a disaster, a waste of talent and ideas so fantastic it almost boggles the mind. Ghost Rider isn't just bad, it's so terrible it actually burns.

Film Rating: ê  (out of 4)