Not of Power But of Friendship and Trust
CLASSIFICATION CP Catholic Patronage
RATING Three of Five Stars
Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures (released on 13 March 2009)
98 minutes
The Film
Race to Witch Mountain is a remake of the 1975 film Escape to Witch Mountain, starring Ike Eisenmann and Kim Richards as Seth and Sara, respectively, and directed by John Hough. This present film used the script of Mark Bomback, and Andy Fickman directs. Both versions are based on the 1968 novel Escape to Witch Mountain by Alexander Key. The film earns the distinction as the first Disney film in 2009 to open at #1, grossing $24.4 million.
The Preview
The Story
The film opens with news reports on alien sightings followed by actual sighting of an alien aircraft by the U. S. government and eventual retrieval of the fallen spaceship.
Meanwhile, it is a regular day for Jack Bruno (Dwayne Johnson), a cab driver in the streets of Las Vegas. His day can be weird though–driving for two Star Wars-customed plastic-gun totters and one Dr. Alex Friedman (Carla Gugino) who is a specialist in scientific theories on UFO and outer space. But his situation gets much weirder when two children, Sara (Anna Sophia Robb) and Seth (Alexander Ludwig), just appeared out of nowhere on his backseat. Yet Bruno is not so into weird things to notice that the taxi he drives reversed on the telekinetic control of Sara and that the people who hit his rented taxicab are government operatives running after the kids.
So Bruno has no clue when Sara and Seth ask him to bring them to a faraway and secluded house. His attention gets piqued only when the siblings pay him $15,000; so he runs after them into the house to tell them that they overpaid.
Inside the house, the kids retrieves a device containing within an alien flora. As they leave the house, an alien creature (an assassin known as “The Siphon”) attacks them. When the three escape, it pursues them until its spaceship crashes into a train inside a tunnel while in their pursuit.
The events forced Bruno to ask the siblings questions. When the kids tell them they came from the outer space, he refuses to believe until Sara’s shows him her telekinetic ability. Along the way he gets irritated when Sara use her telepathic ability in reading his mind. He learned from the kids that their parents sent them to Earth to retrieve the result of an alien experiment that will save their planet from dying and prevent the alien soldiers from invading and occupying the planet.
The trio enters a restaurant in an unknown town of an unknown location in order to get a bite while waiting for Bruno’s taxicab to get fixed in the nearby junkyard. But the government unit, with Major Henry Burke on the lead, traced them. Bruno used the sheriffs to delay the agents. And through the help of their attending waitress, they slip out into their taxi and drive away.
The kids ask Bruno to help them find their spaceship that Burke’s team took away. Any delay of their return home, they say, may not stop the invasion from proceeding. So Bruno brings the siblings to see her passenger Friedman, a discredited astrophysicist who just closed her much-doubted UFO presentation.
Friedman seeks the help of Harlan (Garry Marshall), an ageing government fringe scientist and UFO conspiracy theorist, in getting the most possible location where the spacecraft must be hidden. Harlan pointed at a place known as the Witch Mountain, one of the top secret government facilities in Nevada that cannot be found in the map. He provides them a blueprint and an aerial photo of the facility.
But The Siphon (Tom Woodruff Jr.), who survived the train crash, and Burke’s team find them in the UFO Space Expo. They only make a narrow escape with timely help of Sara’s telekinetic talent. A car pursuit ensues as Burke, with his men, follows Bruno’s yellow taxi only to discover that Harlan is driving it. Meanwhile, Bruno and the alien siblings are already far off Las Vegas, driving on Harlan’s vehicle.
Upon reaching the foot of Witch Mountain, Sara and Seth collapse as tranquilized darts hit them from somewhere. Burke and his men appear and take custody of the siblings. Burke threatens Bruno for another time in jail if he does not cooperate. While being driven back to Las Vegas by two of the government thugs, Bruno and Friedman overcome them, throw them out of the vehicle, and drive back to Witch Mountain. They find a way through the sewer tunnel. Once inside, they create a diversion to bring the soldiers outside the facility as they search for Sara and Seth inside. Only too late when Burke realizes that the target are the kids.
Using a mechanical device, Seth locates their spaceship. Friedman tricks the mechanics into leaving the spacecraft’s holding area. When Burke and his men arrive, the foursome are already half-way into the spaceship. The soldiers straf them but Seth’s invisible protective shield prevents the bullet from reaching them.
Upon realizing the futility, Burke orders his men to stop firing. But suddenly The Siphon enters the holding area and engages the soldiers in a fire fight. With the distraction, the foursome enter the spaceship and Seth to the helm. As the spaceship leaves the holding area, it hits The Siphon who quickly dematerializes and enters the spacecraft. It attacks Bruno. But with Seth’s help, Bruno sends into the ship’s burner and dissolves.
Somewhere, the siblings drop off Bruno and Friedman. Sara gives Bruno the ability to read minds as well as her dog before saying a tearful goodbye.
The film closes with Bruno and Sara looking up as the spaceship disappeared into the sky.
In the post-credit, Bruno and Sara speak before a conference as their unconvinced listeners murmur as they ask questions about the aliens that the speakers supposedly met.
The Review
Race to Witch Mountain is a UFO sci-fi for kids that explores inter-racial friendship and trust. It sprinkles wit and comedy in a way that inspires a smile instead of laughter. The story is so simplified for kids to the point that it turns up very thin in certain details. In fact, Johnson who is a good comedy actor appears somewhat stifled by the script. It also has gaps in the store that makes later actions of the character less logical. One case in point is the tearful goodble of Sara to Bruno in the final scenes when previous scenes show no clear indications that their of closeness grew to justify such an emotional display.
The film may be moderately entertaining to kids, with a good dose of self-defense punching by Bruno and timely use of supernormal powers by Sara and Seth that helps them slip through the handsof their pursuers–the Siphon and the Burke team. The funny quips and punchlines that Bruno deliver however appears so subtle most of the times for kids not to easily miss. Some less attentive adults may even miss these themselves.
Powers are good when used to protect life. Kids are naturally beholden to any display of power in movies, making very susceptible to wrong values injected using awesome visual power. But this film does it differently and in a wholesome manner. It is able to give displays of power through the alien siblings but for defensive reasons and in a less mesmerizing manner. It never shows power used to cause aggression on others or to make fun of the enemies.
Friendship transcends even planetary limits. The film also proposes a broad application of friendship far beyond international limits. And presenting aliends as beings like us, and not horrific personages with fearful powers to weld against us, is a laudable way of handling this entertainment tool for children. It leaves no distasteful residue of confusing values entering their young minds.
Action and open communication win trust. The film proposes a practical way of establishing trust in friendship. Just do your best in helping your friend, tell the truth, and trust will simply follow.
It takes some friends to solve a serious problem. The film builds on what friends can do to help other friends solve their own problems. The role of Harlan is important in illustrating this. Without him, even the scientific expertise of Friedman cannot help them find the location of the spaceship. He also helped in leading Burke and his men in the wrong direction.
The powers of the mind: Sara and Seth are portrayed to possess powers of telepathy (mind-reading), telekinesis (moving objects with the mind), voluntary immateriality, and indestructibility. The film proposes through Sara’s line that this power is available to humans who simply don’t know how to make it work. Christian tradition teaches that humans before The Fall possess mental capabilties available to spiritual beings. That makes Adam and Eve capable of hearing, and perhaps even seeing, God speak to, and visit, them in the Garden. But when they gave in to the temptation of Satan, these gifts got closed to humans, except in some people who remain naturally sensitive to these powers. Giving these powers to aliens is a mythmaking tool to distinguish them as extraterrestrials; that is, presumably more advanced to humans developmentally. But the air of reluctance in its use by the siblings makes its appearnce in the movie safer to Christians. Power is simply not the focus in this film, but the story of friendship and adventure.
The Verdict
Race to Witch Mountain is a wholesome adventure film for kids and the family. And it is free from obviously distorted values flagrant in mainstream films, sometimes even in films for kids.
Reviewed by Zosimo Literatus
