‘RACE to Witch Moun tain,” which bears all the signs of having been composed by an inferior race of alien screenwrit ers from the Hackulon System, does carry one prophetic vision: a glimpse of what Paris Hilton will look like in 20 years.
Hilton’s aunt, Kim Richards, star of the original “Escape to Witch Mountain,” pops up here as a blond roadhouse waitress with a few miles on the chassis. But such a cameo is probably going to be beyond the reach of the 40-something Hilton, considering that Richards was once a far bigger movie star than her niece will ever be.
The 1970s film, which came during a far-out era when people actually believed in aliens, devils and Jimmy Carter, looks like a classic compared to this very loose remake. Dwayne Johnson stars as a former mob driver, now a Vegas cabby, who winds up with two strange children in the back seat.
Chasing them is a snarly government agent (Ciaran Hinds, making a quantum leap down from good movies) whose job is to intone things like, “They’re not children. They’re not even human.” What is this – the Jonas Brothers movie?
The script makes sure we understand that Hinds represents the Patriot Act, hostility to illegal aliens, the Defense Department and other repellent things. Now that today’s Washington emits nothing but sunshine and good intentions, there must be panic back at Hackulon, which hasn’t had to think farther than “villain = government” in years.
The kids, who have come 3,000 light years to save our planet and theirs, fight their way back to the Roswell-like Witch Mountain, where the Pentagon is keeping the spaceship they need to return home. Chases, shootouts and fireballs litter their path. Most of this stuff will keep kids reasonably entertained, but there’s no five-minute segment that makes sense.
The two children (the talented AnnaSophia Robb, who was in “Bridge to Terabithia,” and Alexander Ludwig) wield a range of special powers, including telekinesis and teleportation. They’re impervious to bullets and to speeding cars, and they can fix any slot machine or ATM. Later it will turn out that they can even read minds. Any one of these talents would negate the possibility of their being caught, which makes the chases a bore.
When the government agents race after them, the kids could make the guns pointed at them float in the air and the pursuing cars crash into one another. They could shut off the cars’ engines by wrecking dashboard computers. By reading minds, they could anticipate every tactic and figure out instantly where their spaceship is hidden.
Instead, we get a dozen pointless scenes in which Johnson (whom they don’t even need in the first place, since they can drive a car) tries to outmaneuver the G-men and a speeding train and even a flying saucer. In the big, noisy climax, the kids get to fly their own spaceship, but why should we be worried about whether they’ll make it through a closing doorway? They could just make the doors fly open.
When Johnson and a scientist (Carla Gugino) who specializes in the search for extraterrestrial life sneak into the top-secret government facility, all they have to do to gain entrance to the most secure rooms is knock on the door and punch whoever answers. Gugino fools a roomful of evil Ph.D.s by putting on a white lab coat and blathering about orders from the higher-ups. If you were told to abandon your nefarious doings in a lockdown facility while working for barbarous goons, would you take a stranger’s word for it or maybe make a quick call to the boss?
The government squad at least seems to have its heart in the game. But the kids are also being chased by a RoboCop-like killing machine sent by their planet’s generals to foil the youngsters’ plans to prevent the destruction of humanity.
This would-be terminator – who you would think would possess all of the kids’ skills in addition to military training – is so weak that he can be defeated by a bump on the head. And he’s so lazy, he disappears for large sections of the movie. It’s as if, with the fate of the universe at stake, he keeps taking lengthy coffee breaks mandated by collective bargaining agreements with the Transgalactic Brotherhood of
Robo-Killers.
RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN
No sign of intelligent life.
Running time: 99 minutes. Rated PG (mature themes, mild action violence). At the Union Square, the Battery Park.