The Rock who went up Witch Mountain and came down as Dwayne Johnson

Race to Witch Mountain
Review by Nathan Weinbender

I really like the Rock. Oh, excuse me. I meant to say Dwayne Johnson, who, in his transition from pro wrestler to movie star, has discovered that one cannot maintain professionalism with silly nicknames. It’s probably for the best; just look at Hulk Hogan’s acting career.

Johnson has filled the void that Arnold Schwarzenegger left when his gubernatorial instincts got the best of him. Like Schwarzenegger, he’s both a legitimate action hero and a charismatic and likable leading man—he’s right at home in something like “The Scorpion King,” but he can just as easily carry a wholesome Disney film.

“Race to Witch Mountain” is his second Disney film, actually, following the innocuous “The Game Plan,” and it serves as another example of his versatility: He gets to crack off one-liners, beat up the bad guys, be a big, snuggly hero for a couple of kids and a love interest for Carla Gugino. It’s competent family entertainment, but hardly exceptional, though Johnson is good enough to make you wish he could find a vehicle worthy of his appeal.

He plays Jack Bruno, a reformed felon who now drives a cab in Vegas (I’ve never seen a cabbie as fashionably dressed as Jack, but never mind). One afternoon he finds two young siblings, Sara and Seth (AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig), in his taxi, and he quickly discovers they’re aliens who have just crash-landed on Earth.

Either the film doesn’t completely explain the kids’ modus operandi or I just decided not to understand it, but I believe they’ve come to Earth because their planet is dying and they want to study our life-forms in hopes of saving their race from extinction. If they don’t get back home, Earth is doomed, but I forget exactly why. It doesn’t really matter, though, because the point of the movie is the race to Witch Mountain, where Sara and Seth’s ship has been quarantined by the government.

The movie supplies three different villains for our heroes to outrun: An evil alien called a Siphon, a PG-rated Terminator and has been programmed to stop the kids’ mission; a general with the Department of Defense (Ciarán Hinds) who wants to capture the young aliens for military tests (“They’re not children,” he growls. “They’re not even human!”); and two bumbling henchmen working for a crime lord to whom Jack is indebted.

It’s all very noisy and kinetic, only slowing down for sci-fi jargon that will baffle the kids in the audience. But “Race to Witch Mountain,” which is a reworking of two hit Disney pictures from the ‘70s, never seems to be trying very hard, and its plot is basically a series of predictable action scenes that require the characters to be chased from one location to another.

In fact, the movie falls into such a lockstep pattern that it never establishes a real sense of wonder. The filmmakers have mind-reading, time-bending extra-terrestrials at their disposal, and what do they have them do? Make spare change from the floor of a taxicab float in mid-air.

Directed by Andy Fickman. Written by Matt Lopez and Mark Bombeck; based on the book by Alexander Key. Starring Dwayne Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, Alexander Ludwig, Carla Gugino, Ciarán Hinds and Garry Marshall. PG; 98m.