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Race to Witch Mountain

Buzz says:   MPAA Rating: PG
Current Showtimes: No showtimes available

Disney’s Race to Witch Mountain is a fast paced action kid adventure film that could have been so much more effective if director Andy Frickman had only cast his teen leads better. His pair of 16 year old leads AnnaSophia Robb(Charlie and the Chocolate Factory) and Alexander Ludwig (Sandlot 3) are two attractive, but horribly bland personalities who play Sara and Seth, the mysterious alien kids who materialize in human form in the back seat of a Las Vegas cab after their spaceship crash lands on Earth. Thankfully much of the film’s focus is on the ex-con cab driver Jack Bruno, who acts as the protector of these high school aged aliens as they make their way back to their space ship, which is now located in a California military installation on Witch Mountain.

As Bruno Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is pleasantly comfortable in this avuncular role as the wise cracking, but dependable good guy, who demonstrates a fine sense of subdued humor and a typical dose of his fighting prowess. When Bruno matches up with Dr. Alex Friedman (Carla Gugino), an academic expert of UFOs and alien life, he smoothly handles the lead in a somewhat playfully suggestive romantic subplot. And together with the alien kids they make their adventures an odd sort of typical Disney blended family affair.

Screenwriters Matt Lopez and Mark Bomback rework the plot elements of Alexander Key’s book Escape to Witch Mountain, which was a successful Disney feature in 1975, blending bits of childish humor, wild car chases, several shootouts with alien assassins and federal agents and a fairly scary faced alien monster. Ciaran Hinds is an effectively villainous federal agent tracking down the alien teen pair and even director, and sometimes actor, Garry Marshall provides comic bits a alien expert Dr. Donald Harian. In times of grimly realistic violent films and rude comedies, Race to Witch Mountain seems to provide a safe blend of mindless action and humor for a family seeking an entertaining afternoon at the movies.