Race to Witch Mountain (2009, PG)

Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson has been playing in a few of more family-themed movies lately.  Of those, Race to Witch Mountain is by far the biggest and most explosive.  More importantly, this is a remake of the 1975 movie, Escape to Witch Mountain, and is directed by Andy Fickman. 

The film’s stars are no longer the alien-kids like in 1975, but is now the Rock as Jack Bruno, a down on his luck guy with a troubled past.  He’s a taxi driver and lives in a run-down apartment.  One day, after beating up a couple of mob guys, he finds two teenage kids in the back of his car, brother and sister.  They pay him like $1500 in cash and ask that he drive them out into the middle of the desert.  After a brief run in with government agents (who are tracking down the kids, and which Bruno believes to be more mob hit men), they reach an old, abandoned shack.  After visiting a strange jungle hidden underneath a shack, an alien machine attacks them, intent on killing the kids.  It’s revealed that the kids are in fact aliens from another planet, who have arrived on Earth, and need to get back home.  After teaming up with extra-terrestrial expert Alex Friedman (Carla Gugino), the foursome race over to witch mountain where the kids can board their spaceship and be blasted off into space, but armed government agents always keep up on their trail.

This is no doubt a very entertaining movie.  I also liked the fact that we had a PG rating instead of the now usual PG-13, making it appropriate for families to watch and enjoy.

However, from beginning to end, Race to Witch Mountain is plastered with fights, chases and action sequences, almost nonstop, from beginning to end.  As a result, it hardly even feels like a Disney pic.  And like I said near the beginning of my review: the Rock is now the star.  The alien kids have stepped aside as mere objects for moving the plot along and the Rock evading the agents and rescuing the kids from the alien robot sent to kill them.

I still mostly enjoyed the near-exhaustive Race to Witch Mountain.  It’s sort of fun ride to sit down at the TV and watch, but beyond that, there’s also very little depth, and it lacks some of the joy of a Disney pic.

                                 ** ½/5