Email
Print
'Race to Witch Mountain' short on Disney magic
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: March 27, 2009
Most of the audience for this new Disney flick wasn't around for the original Disney flick on which it's based, "Escape to Witch Mountain," a family-friendly adventure from 1975 about two "orphan" children with strange powers and an out-of-this-world area code.
In this version, the two kids are Nordic-looking space-alien teens who crash-land just outside Las Vegas. They enlist a cabdriver (Johnson) to help on their mission to save Earth from destruction - and elude the "space assassin" and U.S. government agents hot on their trail.
This new "Witch Mountain" is as family-friendly as its '70s predecessor, but sub-par in almost every other way. The special effects are laughably cheesy, the storyline hopelessly muddled, the acting lame, the chuckles few and far between.
Worst of all is the action, essentially a numbing string of car chases, explosions, shootouts and fistfights.
C'mon, people - it's 2009. If you're making a movie about teenage space aliens, can't you come up with something a little more inventive, a smidge more advanced? And especially if you're trying to play in the same ballpark as "E.T." and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," you've got to bring a much better game than this.
Dwayne Johnson, the former wrestler known as "The Rock" and now an actor, has demonstrated considerably more comedic charm in other movies than he does here, saddled with a one-note starring spot that doesn't give him any room to roam.
Carla Gugina, playing a sympathetic scientist, seems like she's wandered onto the set from another movie entirely. Comedian Cheech Marin is wasted in an unnecessary cameo, and Tom Everett Scott, whom many viewers will remember as the affable drummer in "That Thing You Do," plays a sidekick who's supposed to provide comic relief, but doesn't.
The movie depicts a paranoid, close-minded American government that - after half a century of aliens-have-landed movies - still only knows how to respond to visitors from outer space with a hail of bullets.
True to form, the suit-and-tie Department of Defense in "Race to Witch Mountain" even wants to blast the cute, here-to-help space siblings played by AnnaSophia Robb (from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Because of Winn-Dixie") and Alexander Ludwig. It's no wonder spacemen don't drop by our neighborhood more often.
Every Disney movie can't be a classic, obviously. But this one is particularly disappointing, as it could have updated and re-energized a magical, three-decades-old romp for a new generation of young moviegoers.
Everything about this "Race," however, comes off as a cheap also-ran, with little of that ol' Disney magic anywhere to be found.
TBO.com - Tampa Bay Online ©2009 Media General Communications Holdings, LLC. A Media General company. | Member Agreement | Privacy Statement | Work With Us
