Race to Witch Mountain

Review by Matthew Rodgers

Mining the nostalgia of our childhood memories has become common practice in Hollywood, this time Disney plunder their own back-catalogue with the 1975 “Escape”, and 1978 “Return”, to add a modern spin on the Witch Mountain pre-fix, “Race to”.

Taking very little from the original, bar the telekinetic kids and titular destination, Race to Witch Mountain is the sci-fi story of Jack Bruno (Dwayne Johnson), a washed-up Nascar driver-turned Las Vegas cabbie who picks up two intergalactic passengers in the form of Sara and Seth (AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig). Caught up in a mission to save their home planet, the trio must dodge shady government agents, an outer space assassin, and ultimately find their way to Witch Mountain.

“Race” is a very apt word with which to describe the pace of the movie; from the opening shots of space based happenings, to the ensuing taxi shenanigans, it never lets up, and that’s a problem. It’s refreshing to watch a kid’s movie without innuendo, violence, and innocence as pure as Disney’s best live-action output of the past, not as passive as That Darn Cat, but children’s entertainment through and through. So the lack of breathing space allowed because of the breakneck editing and relentless exposition is frustrating. It’s rare to criticise a film for being too short these days (approx 90mins) but an extra ten minutes could have made this an altogether more enjoyable experience.

So what does work? Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson continues to carve out a likeable on-screen persona, the little character development afforded by the script is injected with his own brand of off-kilter smile and tongue in cheek delivery. The kids are alright, asked to act with the deadpan delivery of superior intelligence, only Robb creates something approaching likeable, Ludwig remains just plain weird.

The action is scattershot and too frequent to be memorable, it’s hard to pick a stand-out moment amongst the unspectacular, but the train in tunnel sequence does conjure up some welcome tension, and the annoying Stormtrooper passengers certainly deserve a chuckle.

Not a patch on the original films, but very few remakes are, this does however succeed as twee, uncomplicated kiddie fodder to rank alongside the Spy Kids franchise (and on a ratings scale it’s marginally better than that).