Movie review: Race to Witch Mountain

Playing the illegal alien card.

by John P. Meyer

As a fellow reviewer pointed out to me last night at the preview screening, the part played by The Rock (a.k.a. Dwayne Johnson) in Disney's new Race to Witch Mountain is a reprise of the role enacted by Eddie Albert in the first Witch Mountain movie (1975 title: Escape to Witch Mountain). Mind-boggling, all by itself.

Also mind-boggling are the gaffes of logic and heavy-handed moralizing embedded in the script, but that probably won't be so noticeable to the kid audience to which this film is targeted. Though even kids are likely to cock an eyebrow (kids do that, don't they?) at the manufactured urgency that propels this vehicle towards its inevitably starry-eyed conclusion.

The urgency gets an early start as a series of UFO-related newsreel images and video recordings are presented over the opening credits. This sets the stage for a crash landing somewhere in the Nevada desert, as monitored and described verbally by a chap who must be the oldest and most intense guy ever to man a radar scope for whatever defense agency is doing the radar monitoring chores these days.

Stern-looking (and mean-acting) secret agency chief Henry Burke (Ciarán Hinds) calls out his secret agency troops to seal off the crash site and begin their secret agency investigation. In a nod (the first of several) to Close Encounters, they use the old "we had a big chlorine spill" story to keep prying eyes (and their attendant connecting body parts) away from the region.

Meanwhile, back in Las Vegas, Jack Bruno (Mr. Johnson, or Rock, if you prefer) is minding his own business driving attendees of the annual UFO conference back and forth between their hotel rooms and conference venues when who should show up in his back seat but a pair of fair-haired waifs named Sara (AnnaSophia Robb) and Seth (Alexander Ludwig). These kids talk really funny, but manage to convince Jack to take them to a place deep into the desert in order to find... whatever it is they're looking for.

It soon becomes clear that, in addition to their odd spoken syntax, there are other things "off" about these kids. First off, they seem to know a lot about Jack on first meeting. Secondly, they hand over a wad of cash worthy of horse-choking references. And finally, they can - like - control his cab with their thought waves and demolish sinister, tinted-window Escalades driven by the bad men who are chasing them. (It's that last bit that pretty much gives them away.)

So we proceed to the part where Seth uses his new model iPhone (looks like a test config) and some killer aps to locate a missing data pod that will basically save the world. (Meaning ours.) Problem: the data pod is hidden in a secret tunnel accessed through a dingy refrigerator in a dilapidated shack in the middle of the desert, and there's another alien entity out to get it away from them.

This complicating critter is kind of a Predator/Terminator/Gort amalgam, and your bullets will be useless against him/it, so don't even bother shooting. Fortunately, he/it turns out to be a) selectively vulnerable to being blindsided by little girls with PK, and b) easily distracted by ranks of secret government agency personnel armed with a variety of shoulder-fired weaponry. Even though their bullets are useless against him/it.

Lurking in the wings is a character we glimpse briefly in the film's early stages named Dr. Alex Friedman (Carla Gugino). This fetching scholar is delivering a lecture at the UFO convention operating under the peculiar assumption that the tin-foil hat crowd will enjoy hearing her actual physical science observations in regard to the phenomenon. While Jack initially poo-poos her participation at the conference, for our part we would drop everything to attend one of her lectures, regardless of subject matter. (Yowza.)

But back to the urgent state of affairs, which is this: if Jack can't get Sara and Seth to their U.S. secret agency-appropriated space ship in time for them to fly it back to their home world ("just a wormhole away") before the scheduled invasion begins, Earth is toast. Or, more correctly, humans are toast, and Earth will belong to the toasting victors, whose poor home planet has been spoiled by environmental abuse.

(Oh, the pathos! If only they'd found and invaded us before we globally-warmed the place!)

The entire proceedings are accompanied by Trevor Rabin's distractingly frenetic score, which often seems to be promoting the urgency of the action when none is readily apparent.

Two lapses of logic really stand out amongst those peppering the bouillabaisse:

1) as Jack is driving his cab down a set of railroad tracks, through tunnels and over bridges in order to elude the space ship piloted by the Predator/Terminator/Gort character, he seems downright astonished to find that there's a - OMG! - TRAIN coming his way. (What did he think those shiny silver rails were for, eh?)

2) the top secret desert facility where the crashed saucer is being kept under wraps has loads of multi-level security monitoring its main entrance, but the (unlocked) access tunnels are conveniently unguarded.

Regardless, for a weekend outing with the kiddoes, this ought to fill the bill. Just don't expect a lot of interest on the part of adults.

HIGH POINTS:

* a cool little throwaway cameo featuring Whitley Strieber at the UFO convention

* another cameo role with veteran TV producer/writer Garry Marshall getting screen time as a cult hero UFO buff named Donald Harlan

* Dwayne Johnson continues to exhibit a star-quality screen presence - even when the material he has to work with is less than stellar

* AnnaSophia Robb is an appealing kid with good facial expression, while Alexander Ludwig balances her act nicely with his bratty, spoiled kid vibe