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"Hold it. That bird looks like he just ate an entire bush full of cranberries, and it's all gotta go somewhere once he's done digesting it."

Not one of 2009’s towering intellectual achievements, Race to Witch Mountain manages to slide nuggets of productively subversive thought into its atomic-age story.  Alien kids crash-land on Earth looking for a formula that will help their planet recover its severely crippled ecosystem.  This will avert the necessity of their planet invading ours and harvesting its resources, much to the chagrin of their planet’s military-industrial complex.  As anti-scientific or fringe-scientific as most of the film’s sci-fi premises are (telekinesis and telepathy reside in the “unused” part of our brains; wormholes for interstellar space travel), it extols the virtues of science without setting it in opposition to faith.  Redemption, courage, friendship, and other platitudinal moral lessons remain in the spotlight, as does the now-standard anti-authoritarian streak that permeates so many stories made for modern children.  Ciaran Hinds appears as the face of the heartless, shadowy government agency in charge of alien contact, assuming, as such black ops entities do, that it would be better to ignore the counsel and advice of good-intentioned people with important intel and exploit the aliens for greedy, nationalistic, and paranoid ends.  Hinds is a fine actor and a good villain.  Unfortunately, either his hands were tied by the director or he simply chose to bring no depth to his antagonist.

I’ve already assailed children’s films as teaching kids to aim lower and think slower, a generalization with any number of supportive piece of evidence, and several exceptions.  Race to Witch Mountain is not one of those exceptions, but it was a lot of fun to watch, and a key difference was perhaps the audience with whom I saw it.

A packed theatre, with an approximate 1:3 adult-to-child ratio, is either the ideal milieu in which to view a film with that target audience, or a supremely antipathetic filmgoing experience.  I don’t often see movies in the afternoon or evening; I avoid the big crowds, and I certainly don’t attend many children’s films in the company of children.  Very rarely do I relish having my seat kicked, loud whispers (asking childish questions), and the pitter-patter — in actuality, decibel-level clomping — of tiny figures’ tiny feet running up and down theatre aisles when they get bored, or have to get up and go to the bathroom.  These are the things I think of when I think of going to a G or PG movie.  I forget about the hushed awe that greets quietly magnificent spectacle, genuine “oohs” and “aahs” when a film blasts across a high-octane threshold, or the willingness of young ones to divulge bellicose laughter at silly, but mercifully non-vulgar jokes.  Kids may be conditioned by their mainstream entertainment to demand less, but they are, after all, kids.  Kids turn flashlights into lightsabers and stuffed animals into hetero life-partners who can counsel them through harsh disappointments or pounce on them when they come home from school.  Kids aren’t stupid; our mass-produced films may patronize them, but it was truly refreshing to watch a brisk adventure film with people who have not yet begun to jade.

Besides the bundle of positive messages, the film  gratified me on a superficial level.  The fact of the matter is that I like Dwayne Johnson.  He’s not a cultured thespian; he’s just got oodles of spare charisma and is willing to strut his way through a film at whatever pace a director wants.   Johnson is fun to watch, and his big-attitude antics here feel more real and focused than the motley assemblage of empty tics and shifting eyes that marked his performance in Southland Tales.  Likewise, Carla Gugino — last seen bent over a pool table in Watchmen, about to get raped — shows her kiddie-flick veteran stripes.  As an impossibly radiant scientist who never abandoned her geeky obsession with the far-fetched possibilities of the universe, she’s a perfect bubbly counterpart to the erstwhile Rock’s hardbitten cab driver.  Incredibly, there’s very little reason for either of them to be in the movie.  In terms of pure plot mechanics, it’s far more likely that a pair of superpowered, preternaturally intelligent alien kids could manage very well on their own without their human sidekicks, but the producers know just as well as I do that it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.  Alexander Ludwig and AnnaSophia Robb are cute as smiley-face buttons, but they aren’t quite yet adept enough to carry a film on their own.  As Sara and Seth, aliens with a vital mission, they don’t truly need the Rock and the mom from Spy Kids; as a couple of promising, unseasoned child actors, they need them like tangerine trees need marmalade skies.

For all the explosions, lasers, flying saucers and brawling — and once the two kids show up, the film really is one long, relentless chase sequence — the excitement of the pace is pummeled back at every turn by incoherent action scenes and workmanlike point-and-shoot staging.  While the cast is busy finding interesting ways to deliver ridiculous (but effective) lines, director Andy Fickman is consumed with the task of forcing viewers to wonder what the hell is happening onscreen.  Whether he or editor David Rennie is more to blame is beside the point; a fairly decent escapist flick is hacked very nearly to death by craftsmen who simply don’t know what they’re doing.  I was just happy to see the Tom Woodruff, Jr. in the cast as the galactic assassin tracking the adorable extraterrestrial duo.  Woodruff has contributed effects work or appeared in costume in franchises like The Terminator, the Alien series (including Alien vs. Predator), Tremors, Starship Troopers, and, perhaps most importantly, he was the Gillman in Fred Dekker’s seminal 1987 masterpiece, The Monster Squad.  In my book, his presence lends Race to Witch Mountain a desperately-needed jolt of behind-the-scenes class.

This film’s cinematic heritage is no great shakes.  The first two Disney films based on Alexander Key’s novel, Escape to Witch Mountain, were mediocre programmers from the mid-70s to the early 80s.  None was remarkable — just a bunch of Disney family fare hokum with now-dated special effects.  I saw them several times each as a child, and I have no more critical respect for them than a considerable amount of nostalgia permits.  Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann have bit parts in the remake as a couple of small-town folks who give our intrepid band of fugitives some assistance — though I didn’t even recognize them at the time.  After all, thirty years changes a person, and the wide-eyed adolescents from the films I saw as a child are now gracefully-aged character actors in their mid-40s.

As terrible as the filmmaking is, I find myself in the eye of a storm of dewy, good-ol’-days memories, an affinity for the likable cast, sympathy for the themes, and the fact that I’m a sucker for good-natured pictures about normal folks on a crazy adventure, where they end up piling in a camper with a cute dog and saving the world.  The kids seemed to like it and I wasn’t offended by anything but the idiotic camerawork. Every once in a while, it’s nice to pretend that I’m not as jaded as I am.  At the risk of sounding like a studio shill, I had a good time, and I hope there’s a sequel.  Maybe Rob Minkoff will direct it!

Edited by Tracy McCusker.