New Witch Mountain Forgets the Magic
Sara (AnnaSophia Robb) and Seth (Alexander Ludwig) aren’t your typical Las Vegas teenagers. These two diminutive blonde-haired kids are quite literally from out of this world, sent by their parents to Earth to retrieve the key to save both their planet and ours from total destruction.
Annasophia Robb, Dwayne Johnson and Alexander Ludwig in Walt Disney Pictures' Race to Witch Mountain
Understandably, chauffeuring the two around and keeping them out of the clutches of both a persistent intergalactic bounty hunter and a sinister government operative (Ciarán Hinds) wasn’t what taxi driver Jack Bruno (Dwayne Johnson) had in mind when he got out of bed. But that’s exactly what he’s doing, and with the help of sexy insecure scientist Dr. Alex Friedman (Carla Cugino) he’s got to get Sara and Seth to Witch Mountain, fatherly instincts coming out he didn’t even know he possessed.
I can’t really call Disney’s Race to Witch Mountain a remake of their minor 1974 classic Escape to Witch Mountain. While certain elements are similar (the kids still have magical powers, the people chasing them are still idiots and a gigantic RV does indeed make an appearance although, sadly, it does not fly), overall there have been plenty of changes made to author Alexander Key’s source material.
Writers Matt Lopez (Bedtime Stories) and Mark Bomback’s (Live Free or Die Hard) script basically cuts right to the chase. Where the first film (as did, to some extent at least, its 1978 sequel Return from Witch Mountain) certainly wasn’t rocket science, it spent time building up and exploring its characters, giving reluctant hero Eddie Albert a reason to care about the two small children suddenly put in in his hands.
While the screenplay makes a few futile stabs at doing the same, the only thing this movie is concerned about is speed, speed and more speed. The filmmakers assume the audience watching this has the attention span of gnat, plot points flying by so fast I almost expected someone in the preview audience to get slapped across the face by a speeding preposition. Director Andy Fickman (The Game Plan) has the accelerator planted to the floor, the zip-swish of it all enough to make even the most even-keeled feel more than a bit nauseous.
On top of all that, the production values are shockingly low. I’ve seen Disney put better looking productions together for their cable television channel, so much of this looking so horrible and unfinished it makes the special effects of the earlier efforts look like excerpts from The Matrix. There’s a scene in an underground jungle-slash-garden-slash-sanctuary-slash-I-don’t-know-what-the-heck-it-was that’s as silly as anything I’ve seen this year. I kid you not, it looked like a set from the old “Muppet Show,” the only difference being Jim Henson would have found it too cheap looking and had told his crew to redesign it immediately.
Thankfully, what Fickman does have is an extremely game cast that’s far better than the material warrants. Johnson, Hinds, Cugino and especially Robb (who really needs to be a star, she’s absolutely wonderful) play it straight, never tipping their hand or winking at the camera. They invest themselves into their characters, and while portraying them probably wasn’t a stretch the whole lot elevate the movie and make it far easier to endure (and sometimes even enjoy) than it would have been otherwise. Additionally, look fast for very cute cameos by original aliens Ike Eisenmann and Kim Richards, both still instantly recognizable three-plus decades after the fact.
In the end, it’s all rather forgettable, and if not for an almost completely unforgivable avalanche of gunfire during the climax I doubt I could have worked up the effort to claim a definitive position (let alone write this review). What I do think is that Disney has wasted a golden opportunity to resurrect one of the more whimsical gems sitting inside their library, Race to Witch Mountain forgetting the magic that made that first escape such an endearing joy.
Film Rating: êê (out of 4)
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