Reviewed by Lamar Kukuk
3/14/09
Remakes make all kinds of
sense for studio suits. They get to tell their shareholders that
they're exploiting a corporate asset in their long-standing rights to the
original, and to pump up sales for yet another “Super-Amazing Unlimited
Ultimate Edition” DVD (complete with free movie ticket). It's also
easier to promote an existing property than a new story. You may
not see a single trailer, TV ad or poster for Race to Witch Mountain,
but when you see the title in your local theater listings, odds are you'll
think “Oh, there's a new Witch Mountain movie out.” Which is not
to say that there's anything inherently wrong with remakes, just that movies
that begin life as a deal already have one strike against them. And
Race to Witch Mountain is very much “deal first, movie second”,
pairing superpowered alien kids with an action hero protector for a movie
that peppers relentless but defanged action sequences with bonding and
a cute animal sidekick. Director Andy Fickman and writers Matt Lopez
and Mark Bomback are so busy with their checklist of Family Blockbuster
Stuff that their movie is woefully short on plot and is amazingly dull
for something with this much “action”. Good thing an excellent cast
is game: perversely, the only time this Race gets interesting
is when the characters stop running and actually talk.
A spaceship crashes in the
Nevada desert. A recovery team led by government spook Henry Burke
(Ciaran Hinds) finds the wreckage and tracks of its' occupants, but the
actual aliens elude capture. They're two humanoid kids named Sara
(AnnaSophia Robb) and Seth (Alexander Ludwig) who turn up in the backseat
of a taxi driver named Jack Bruno (Dwayne Johnson). Jack's an ex-con
trying to go straight, but he's being pursued by the hired goons of a man
he used to work for. It's these goons he assumes are chasing the
kids, who give him a ridiculous amount of money to drive them to a cabin
in the middle of nowhere. There, he follows them to retrieve a device
containing plans that can save both their world and our own. But
because some on their homeworld would rather just invade Earth than worry
about fixing their own planet (whether their president is named Georgix
W. Bushor is left unanswered), the assassin Siphon (Tom Woodruff Jr.) has
been dispatched to stop them from returning. So, it's evade Siphon
and Burke's men while getting Sara and Seth's ship back from the government's
base on Witch Mountain. And Jack knows someone who might be able to help:
UFO expert Dr. Alex Friedman (Carla Gugino), who just happens to be in
town.
What works about Race
to Witch Mountain is simple: it's got a great cast and they've
been given likable characters to play. I have to say I'm disappointed
that the success of the utterly awful The Game Plan (also directed
by Fickman) has inspired Johnson to reinvent himself as a family movie
macho father figure, but unlike his muggingly awful performance there,
here he's back to channeling his Everyman Hero appeal. And he does
work well with the kids, especially Robb, who is a memorably awkward alien,
just as Ludwig makes an amusing Mean Alien Kid. Gugino makes a great
family movie scientist because she plays smart just as well as sexy, and
she has good chemistry with Johnson. Hinds is mainlining Evil, and
he's a hoot as one of those Government Thugs who'd probably have refused
to help even if anyone ever had gotten around to telling him the world
was at stake just because he couldn't bear to do ANYTHING nice.
These likable characters
keep the plates spinning, but Witch Mountain never gets up any kind
of menace or dramatic steam because it's caught between a rock (a desire
to be a relentless action movie) and a hard place (a desire to be a PG
family flick). Not since the A-Team went off the air have
so many people survived so much carnage. Compounding the fact that
Fickman shows no aptitude for directing action, everything's cut in a way
that would have Michael Bay's head spinning, perhaps so the studio could
tell the MPAA “How can you call it violence, you can't even see anything!”
And, for the life of me, I can't begin to explain to you what happens at
the end of Jack and Siphon's climactic fight, but I think it proved that
our hero's a really big jerk.
Lopez and Bomback's script
is too lazy for much heavy lifting. Instead, connections are mostly
of the “oh, come on, you know we need you” variety like having Seth allow
Jack to follow he and his sister into their secret lair even after he's
insisted that he doesn't trust the cabbie. Alex gives Jack her card
after one ride in his cab and he immediately assumes she'll be able to
help later on. Witch Mountain is the worst-guarded government facility
ever, and the kids' magical powers assure that getting in and out of anywhere
is never particularly hard. And a wrap-up that plays over the end
credits assures us that everything worked out in a way so awesome the rest
of recorded history is gonna be a big ol' party.
I honestly don't remember
the original Escape to Witch Mountain (it came out when I was 3),
although I do have a faint recollection of its' 1978 sequel. Fans
will be happy to see original stars Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann in virtuous
cameo roles. This mostly name-only remake doesn't offer much else
to fans of the original, and it's probably both too violent for kids and
not violent enough for adults. But it does provide solid roles for
an excellent cast, although if I were them, I wouldn't carve out space
in my schedule for that sequel the tag cries out for. But there might
be cameos for them in whatever Witch Mountain movie Disney stockholders
cry out for around 2025. |
