Race To Witch Mountain
I am not a runner but I imagine that the winning strategy for a race is to start out strong to establish a good position, find a sustainable pace to stay in the game over the long haul and reserve enough energy for a big push in the final stretch. The same strategy applies to good storytelling. RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN certainly starts out strong with a solid first act, establishing itself as a self-assured, lean action film but it loses speed and lags in the middle, finally finishing in a predictable and unspectacular manner.Presented as a re-imagining of Disney’s 1975 film ESCAPE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN, this movie maintains the basic premise of two aliens, in the form of teenage siblings, who must make a journey to back to the titular mountain but virtually every other element is new but not necessarily improved.
In RACE, the brother and sister, Sara and Seth (AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig), know they are aliens from the start, no slow unraveling of repressed memories here, and are aware of their grave mission that holds the fate of Earth in the balance. Together, with the help of reluctant anti-hero Jack Bruno (Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson), the trio begins their race back to their spaceship at Witch Mountain in order to call off an imminent invasion of Earth planned by the military of their home world.
Pursued by both government agents and an extraterrestrial assassin, they face enormous opposition that gets played out in rather generic action set pieces. There are plenty of guns, chases and explosions to earn this film its stripes as an action movie but its toned down enough to keep the rating at PG (the crashes, explosions and fights result in little if any physical consequence). And while there might be enough special effect bells and whistles here to wow the kids, more mature audiences will find lack of realism in the action, character motivation and story logic to be tiring as they wage a fight to suspend their disbelief.
And there is plenty of disbelief to be had. This is sci-fi with an asterisk. A deep analysis of the alien biology or technology is not called for nor is it desired. Just know that when Sara and Seth pull out the extraterrestrial iPhoney-all-purpose gadget thing, it is going to be able to solve whatever challenge is keeping them from moving forward in the plot. No explanations needed for this rocket science (and its target audience won’t really be asking).
Dwayne Johnson continues to be a solid and versatile performer, handling humor, action and light drama with ease, always hitting just the right tone for the material. As required by all the roles that he takes on, he comes across as genuine and immensely likable. As the distant and cold aliens, AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig are required to do little more than hit their marks and they pull that off without invoking the ‘bad kid actor’ alarm that makes some films cringe-worthy. The supporting players, lead by Ciarin Hinds, Carla Gugino and Garry Marshall provide caricatures worthy of a Saturday morning kids show.
Nostalgic fans of the original will be please with the welcomed cameos of Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann, who starred as siblings Tia and Tony in ESCAPE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN. They are incorporated into the film in an organic and effective manner that puts to shame some of the more clumsy attempts like this in other films.
Go into RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN knowing that it is an action movie for kids and you should be okay. On that level, it will do a decent job at entertaining children for an hour and forty minutes but this is not likely to be a breakout hit that revives this as a blockbuster franchise.
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, Alexander Ludwig, Ciarin Hinds, Carla Gugino
Directed by: Andy Fickman (The Game Plan, She’s The Man)
Rated PG
Running time: 98 minutes
