Race to Witch Mountain Movie Review Dwayne Johnson & AnnaSophia Robb

Race to Witch Mountain (2.5 Stars)

Dwayne Johnson & AnnaSophia Robb in the Movie Race to Witch Mountain

Race to Witch Mountain Movie Review.

You get the feeling the Walt Disney Company is determined to remake every live-action feature in its canon, with the possible exceptions of "The Happiest Millionaire" and "Superdad."

The latest Disney repurposing project works rather well:

A frenetic update of "Escape to Witch Mountain" (1975) in which Dwayne "Rock No Longer" Johnson reunites with the director of "The Game Plan," Andy Fickman, and in which the phrase "pimped-out" makes a brief appearance, in addition to an awful lot of head-banging action, as a reminder that it is no longer 1975.

Watching the previous version, which spawned a couple of sequels, you're struck by how its premise -- alien kids blessed with special powers, including telekinesis, trying to get back home -- could, with a turn of the screw, end up scarier than "Carrie."

Disney only allowed so much live-action darkness back then, of course. Though nothing in the world is creepier than Bob Crane in "Superdad."

But times have changed, and Fickman's hopped-up remake lays on the "X-Files" paranoia and the fireballs flung by a RoboCop-like assassin trying to neutralize the aliens disguised as earth kids, played by AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig.

Aided by Johnson's Vegas cabbie and Carla Gugino's astrophysicist, they must do what the title compels them to do: locate their recently crash-landed spaceship and get on home. The back-story has something to do with climate change, both on Planet X and on Earth. The screenplay by Matt Lopez and Mark Bomback is blithely carefree in its preference for car crashes and shadowy U.S. government types perpetually running into restaurants or a Vegas convention hall bearing arms. Ciaran Hinds plays Burke, the character most likely to hang out with one of Scully and Mulder's superiors.

Audiences like Johnson. He's a highly agreeable presence, a big, muscly sweetie-pie, and while "Race to Witch Mountain" rarely rises above the functional, either as storytelling or as visual kinetics, it moves like it means it and keeps Johnson front and center, either fuming or sputtering.

If there's one thing holding him back both as an actor and a movie star, it's his penchant for delivering 100 percent every second; playing against the surface meaning of a line or not settling for the standard-issue reaction shot can help an audience warm up to a performer.

The action beats are so relentless, no sooner does one chase end than another begins.

You cannot believe how often the phrase "roller-coaster" is invoked in Disney's press materials for this movie. The showpiece sequences include a game of chicken between Johnson's taxi and an oncoming freight train, and a UFO squaring off against the cab, fireballs a-blazing. The latter battle begins just when one character's on the verge of explaining a bit of plot to another. It's as if the UFO has something against exposition.

Well, so do audiences as a rule.

Even if you have to explain to younger kids why Johnson's character is being shaken down by mobsters, "Race to Witch Mountain" may well snag some of Disney's lucrative "National Treasure" audience.

Benign yet assaultive PG mayhem -- it's a neat trick if you can pull it off.

Race to Witch Mountain

MPAA rating: PG (for sequences of action and violence, frightening and dangerous situations, and some thematic elements).

Running time: 1:39.

Starring: Dwayne Johnson (Jack Bruno); AnnaSophia Robb (Sara); Alexander Ludwig (Seth); Carla Gugino (Dr. Alex Friedman); Ciaran Hinds (Burke).

Directed by Andy Fickman; written by Matt Lopez and Mark Bomback, based on the book by Alexander Key; produced by Andrew Gunn. A Walt Disney Pictures release.

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