Race to Witch Mountain

Rating : 4/10
Release Date : Mar ‘09
Time : 98 minutes
Director : Andy Fickman ; Writer : Matt Lopez (from Alexander Key’s book
‘Escape to Witch Mountain’)
Starring : Dwayne Johnson, Anna SophiaRobb, Alexander Ludwig, Carla Gugino, Ciaran Hinds
Standard sci-fi flick with decently funny dialogue, some over the top characters, the mandatory love interest and too much implausibility all thrown in equal measure. Does it keep you hooked till the end ? Not really – the sheer predictability of it all does get to you after a while. The only thing that really kept me going is the cool screen presence of ‘The Rock’ – this guy is really good as an action hero and I’ve enjoyed his films like ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ and even ‘Walking Tall’.

So, some aliens land in the USA (where else ?), a top secret government organisation (what else ?) reaches the site first in an effort to capture the aliens and keep this fact secret from the unsuspecting Americans (their TV reporters are clearly not as enterprising as their Indian counterparts). The Aliens are actually formed like human kids, which is a nice touch, as it instantly makes us like them. They are on a mission to save their planet and the Earth (why else ?) and they co-incidentally run into ‘The Rock’ (who else ?), who helps them fulfil their mission, while picking up cute lady scientist along the way.

I’m a bit surprised it did as well as it did at the box-office (approx $ 100mn) but then we know the American’s can be very gullible – after all, they elected Bush twice !