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Race to Witch Mountain
The non-alcoholic beer of action movies
2009
Review: March 21, 2009
Director: Andy Fickman
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, Alexander Ludwig, Carla Gugino
Might be fun.
THE SETUP:
Loose reworking of the 70s Disney film in which two alien kids have to get back to their people.
DISCUSSION:
Since I have a sentimental fondness for the original Escape to Witch Mountain, I knew I would be drawn to see the remake. I went in expecting to be amused and perhaps outraged by how they had changed the story, but came out completely entertained and with a smile on my face. The audience I was with also clapped when it was over.
The credits open with a bunch of UFO footage. We notice that the kids from the original are listed in the opening credits, and I swear there’s a TYPO in the opening credits, as Ike Eisenmann is listed as “Iake.” I don’t think I’ve ever noticed a typo in opening credits before. Anyway, before you know it, this spacecraft has crashed in the desert, and Ciran Hinds as Burke and his Project Moon Dust is gathering his team to go out to the crash site. There is evidence that the aliens escaped.
Cut to THE ROCK. He’s a Las Vegas cab driver with permanent stubble and gleamingly white teeth, and he takes Dr. Alex Friedman to this convention at Planet Hollywood [who must have paid some serious money to have their name mentioned 35 times in the movie], which is all about aliens and whatnot. We see that The Rock, that’s Jack Bruno, by the way, lives in a crappy hotel room with a poster for Bullitt on the wall, and is a former gangster of some type who is now trying to go clean. He’s not going back to prison! All of a sudden the kids are in his cab, and give him a wad of cash to take them to this place in the desert.
The kids are named Seth and Sara, initially raising my ire that they renamed the kids, but I think their point is that these are different kids. They encounter some nasty black SUVs on the drive out, and Seth pops out of the back of the cab and smashes one with his body—this is the thing you’re seeing all the time in the trailers. He can move through metal and make his body incredibly dense. Jack assumes that the cars were the gangsters after him, and apologizes to the kids. They find this abandoned house, where the kids locate some gadget, and this whole area below ground that is full of plants and has these big glowing drips of slime hanging from the ceiling. There they are menaced by the Predator, I mean, some alien assassin after them, and there are numerous explosions and bodies thrown yards. This ain’t your father’s Witch Mountain!
They take off in the cab and hide from the assassin, who has a zippy spaceship of his own, and now we have the first of our many little steals from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, first when a light scans the road to locate the kids, then as an approaching spaceship just turns out to be a passing truck. They end up in a train tunnel with a train coming and barely escape, and by this time you’re thinking “WHY is this cab driver helping these kids so much?” He has no real connection to them. By this time they’ve also explained that they’re aliens.
Here’s the deal. No longer just castaway kids who have to get back together with their families, now they returned to Earth to pick up the gadget that their parents carelessly left there [dropsy!], because if they don’t get it, their planet will launch an alien invasion that will destroy humankind. It’s much more complex than that and involves a lot of alien planet politics, but all you have to know is that they need to get the thingy and get back to their spaceship.
They’re chillin’ at this local diner when who’s this? Why it’s Kim Richards as Tina, the waitress! And who is that over there, but Ike Eisenmann as Sheriff Antony! These are the kids from the original, if you hadn’t guessed, and it’s kind of nice that they movie here actually gives them speaking parts, rather than just have then appear for a second here or there. Burke finds them there, a standoff follows, and Tina helps the kids out the back way. When she leans down to Sara and wishes her “Good luck,” it’s more than just straight dialogue, it seems she’s passing on the role with the best of wishes.
Let’s discuss the kids. They’re good. They aren’t annoying and whiny or overly cool, which is appreciated. Seth is grouchy and doesn’t trust humans, and Sara is wide-eyed and scared. Furthermore, they can both act, and both stay in character.
SPOILERS > > >
So they go back to Vegas and the alien life expo, where they meet Alex, and give her a Mission-To-Mars inspired holographic explanation of the kids’ home planet. They also get help from Garry Marshall as Harlan Friedman, who I think is supposed to represent Harlan Ellison. He informs them that they have to go out to Witch Mountain, which is probably where their ship is. They go, get caught, and Burke is going to kill the kids and experiment on them in the name of science! They’re rescued, they get their ship, they escape, they say goodbye, the end.
< < < SPOILERS END
It wasn’t offensive, and I was expecting that it would be. It’s a mildly fun adventure aimed at young teens—meaning that there are lots of special effects and action, but no sex and no bloody violence. Although there are several guns, including machine guns shot right at the kids. Things move along quickly and it’s all reasonably amusing. If I were an adult and I hadn’t seen the original, I’m not sure I’d really want to sit through this, but if you have kids who consider themselves too old for cartoons but aren’t old enough for violent adult action films, you could do this… it’s kind of the non-alcoholic beer of action movies.
In terms of remaking a key movie from my childhood, I think it succeeds in large part because it is so affectionate toward the original. They kept some of the key elements—kids with powers on the run hooking up with a protective father figure, but there are other touches like having the kids from the original have speaking parts and wish the kids good luck, and, making a notable, chuckle-inducing appearance late in the movie, the Winnebago! So they’re not so much raping your childhood as gently diddling it.
All in all, pretty amusing if you have kids, irrelevant if you don’t, but inoffensive nonetheless.
SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?
If you have kids or are curious what they did with the original.
