Mrs. Doubtfire

Chris Columbus, 1993
Rotten Tomatoes score: 71%

With the recent announcement of an upcoming Mrs. Doubtfire sequel, I figured it was time to consider the original. This hilarious romp is the tale of two dangerously unfit parents: A father whose delusions and obsessions drive him to spy on his ex-wife and children in disguise, and a mother so stupid she doesn't realize that the 6-foot-tall sexagenarian nanny in her midst looks and sounds exactly like Robin Williams.

Sally Field plays Miranda Hillard, a mother of three in San Francisco who is fed up with her lout of a husband, Daniel. As the movie begins, Daniel is fired from his job of pointlessly re-dubbing all the dialogue in 1940s-era cartoons. Soon enough, his marriage falls apart too, because Miranda is tired of his unreliability and his habit of throwing goat-themed parties for the kids. Daniel fares poorly in the divorce after the family court correctly perceives his spectacular incompetence as a father (and as a functioning adult in society). Miranda ends up with full custody of the children, unless and until Daniel can get his act together and land a new job.

So Daniel does what anybody would do in his situation—he disguises himself as an elderly Englishwoman named Mrs. Doutfire and takes a job as Miranda's housekeeper. (The sequence where Daniel's brother, Harvey Fierstein, helps him create his cross-dressing persona was totally lost on me as an 8-year-old, but I have grown to appreciate it.) It would be unfair to characterize this disguise as transparent, but Miranda and her kids must be close to Lois Lane levels of obliviousness not to recognize the man they've lived with for years underneath the wig and make-up.

Somehow Daniel manages to find enough time away from his day job to work as a gofer at a local TV station. He performs a manic, paleontologically inaccurate stand-up routine about dinosaurs, which the station owner happens to overhear. Confusing "children" with "your parents in the 70s," Mr. Lundy decides Daniel would be perfect to host a children's TV show, so he arranges a dinner meeting. Meanwhile, Miranda has developed a relationship with James Bond, much to Daniel's chagrin, and they have invited Mrs. Doubtfire to a family dinner at exactly the same restaurant at exactly the same time.

This leads to a Fred Flintstone escapade where Daniel has to repeatedly change back and forth from his hundreds of pounds of Mrs. Doubtfire make-up into the tasteful red real estate agent's blazer he's wearing to impress his boss. He suffers two wardrobe malfunctions: First, he goes to Mr. Lundy's table dressed as Mrs. Doubtfire, and when questioned, he explains that this is the character he will be playing on the children's show. Second, he has to use the Heimlich maneuver to rescue Pierce Brosnan from choking, and in the process loses his mask and wig.

Now that the awful truth is out, Miranda is furious at first. But eventually she realizes that her children are better off if they can spend time with their father now and then, so the two of them come to an arrangement. The movie ends with Mrs. Doubtfire appearing on a Mister Rogers style TV show, giving reassurance to a young letter-writer whose parents are divorced.

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This movie reminds me of two other movies about divorced parents, The Santa Clause and Liar, Liar. All three are great, and all of them had a lot of material that went over my head the first time around. Of the three, the only one where the parents get back together in the end is Liar, Liar. I think that's a cop-out ending, but on the other hand that movie was less sappy than Mrs. Doubtfire. I'm not sure which is better. I guess that one's next.

Ghost Rider

Mark Steven Johnson, 2007
Rotten Tomatoes score: 27%

This Marvel superhero movie was released in February 2007, which was the first sign that it would not be a smash-hit. Superhero movies are the epitome of the summer blockbuster, so releasing one in late winter would seem to indicate a lack of faith in its blockbusting capabilities. And sure enough, Ghost Rider did not measure up to the Spider-Man and X-Men movies that went before it.

But you know, this movie is not awful. It's okay. And that's not such a small accomplishment in my book.

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The story revolves around Johnny Blaze, a stunt motorcyclist in the tradition of Evel Knievel and Homer Simpson, who sells his soul to the devil to save his sick father's life. The devil (called Mephistopheles and played by Peter Fonda) cures Johnny's father, but then causes him to die in an accident the next day. Johnny is angry, but Mephistopheles insists that he has upheld his end of the agreement, and that he will one day come a-calling on Johnny's soul.

(Why does the devil always do things like this? He's not going to get any decent word-of-mouth at this rate.)

Years later, we meet Johnny as an adult. I'm assuming there was a deleted scene where the devil removes Johnny's face and replaces it with Nicolas Cage, like in Face/Off; otherwise I'm at a loss to explain why he looks absolutely nothing like he did in the prologue.

His best bud, Donal Logue (who I always find really likable, but I can't put my finger on why), is at his wits' end with Johnny's outlandishly dangerous stunts. Johnny knows that Mephistopheles' unholy power prevents him from dying before he fulfills his end of their bargain, so he recklessly undertakes bike stunts that would make Super Dave Osborne blush. At one such extravaganza, he finds himself face-to-face with his high school sweetheart Roxanne (Eva Mendes).

Unfortunately, their efforts to rekindle their romance are stymied by the arrival of Mephistopheles' evil son Blackheart upon the earth. Blackheart is a being so dangerous that even the devil himself wants him stopped. Apparently, Blackheart wants to collect on a hundred-year-old contract that will give him the power of a thousand damned souls. It's pretty serious.

Mephistopheles commands Johnny to do battle against Blackheart by becoming the Ghost Rider, a fire skeleton monster that rides a magic motorcycle. The Ghost Rider has the power to turn people's eyes into brimstone or something, although I'm not sure why he wants to. He also has a fiery chain that he uses to kill Blackheart's evil angel friends.

When Blackheart murders Donal and kidnaps Roxanne, Ghost Rider seeks help from Sam Elliott, playing exactly the same role as in The Big Lebowski. Sam Elliott disappears after completing his four minutes of screen time, and Johnny rather unspectacularly kills Blackheart and saves the day. Having discharged his contractual duties, Johnny chooses to remain the Ghost Rider to fight for right.

Like I said before, this movie is all right. It isn't good, but it's easy to sit through, and what more can you really ask for?

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All right, look.

There is a sequel to this movie. It's called Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. Rotten Tomatoes gives it an 18%. Please, please, please do not see this movie. It is awful. It is absolutely dreadful. I detest this movie.

It was directed by an entity known as "Neveldine/Taylor" and Nic Cage returns to the role. No other cast members return. As a matter of fact, calling it a "sequel" is misleading, since it in no way follows the plot of the first movie. What plot there is is incomprehensible. The characters' actions bear no correspondence to human behavior, and the dialogue consists of a series of random, meaningless sentences in the English language. If the movie had been in Hungarian, I don't think I would have noticed the difference. There are scenes where Nicolas Cage just stares at the camera and makes funny faces while riding his motorcycle, with no context or explanation.

This is an unspeakable monstrosity of a movie.

A character that seems to be the villain is played by Ciaran Hinds. The prevailing hypothesis is that this is Mephistopheles from the first movie, but he is inexplicably referred to as "Roarke." Although Johnny Blaze had embraced his Ghost Rider persona in the previous movie, he is now desperate to be rid of it. Equally unexplained is the fact that Johnny now becomes the Ghost Rider when he is angry. The only conceivable way to account for this is that the writers confused Ghost Rider with the Incredible Hulk, and no one ever realized the mistake. (Indeed, it would astonish me if the screenplay was ever read by anyone before production began.)

I hate this movie.

Here, just watch this scene. This may make you laugh. It makes me weep. That's because I have seen the movie, and I can report that everything else in it is even worse.

I realize that my over-the-top condemnation of Spirit of Vengeance may make some foolish reader decide to see it, on the theory of "How bad could it really be?" and/or "If it's this awful, I've got to see it." I assure you, you will regret it. (Remember who's saying this, now—how terrible does a movie have to be before I hate it?)

I refuse to include a graphic labeling this movie as over- or underrated. It is beneath contempt. Let us never speak of it again.