Review: A Race to nowhere

Race To Witch Mountain (U/A)
Director: Andy Fickman
Writers: Matt Lopez and Mark Bomback
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Anna Sophia Robb, Alexander Ludwig and Carla Gugino
Rating: * 1/2

Race To Witch Mountain can make for a misleading title. Firstly, one gets to know of Witch Mountain only in the film’s final moments. And then a word like "race" could have you thinking of Nissan Skylines and Ford Mustangs, when all you get is a yellow taxi with an ad on it’s roof that strangely says, “Life comes at you fast”. (Could be a product placement that you regularly see in films these days.

So, do they flag off at the starting line, the object being to reach the mountain? Not really. Two kid aliens — Seth (Alexander Ludwig) and Sara (Anna Sophia Robb) — reach earth, wanting to take back a chemical that can help them make their planet’s environment liveable again. They need to find it, retrieve their spacecraft and fly back home.

In their path stands an ugly-looking alien assassin, along with government officials who want to conduct experiments on these kids. All this, while the kids can’t help but refer to people with their full names, and speak in impeccable English devoid of slang or tone modulation. This way, their planet’s inhabitants would not require invading the earth and colonising it.

To their rescue comes cabbie with an attitude, Jack Bruno (Dwayne Johnson). Despite the powers the kids have — Sara has the power of telekinesis, moving objects at will, apart from the ability to read minds, and Seth can reach through metals and create force fields — they still need Bruno to throw some punches at the assassin and government officials and save Mother Earth.

Dwayne Johnson has played a loan shark and a rugby player; tough guys with a sense of humour. Here, he plays a down-in-the-dumps, stubbled cabbie, an ex-convict imprisoned for grand theft auto, with a yearning to lead a clean life.

Without doubt, Johnson wants to find a niche as an action hero doing comedies, a la Arnold Schwarzenegger. But in this badly-written script of unfunny lines, his antics — raised eyebrows, grins and jokes about alien-speak, like “take me to your commander, earthlings” — just don’t pass muster.

And he needs to get over his The Rock hangover. It is one thing to be playing to a crowd of whistling front-benchers in a wrestling ring, and quite another to be acting in a film.

Besides, the whole idea of saving the earth isn’t compelling enough to watch a movie any more. Even at 98 minutes, the movie appears too long and boring. For a very long time, no one knows what the kids are after and when we do get to know this, all the suspense and loud, annoying music is a big let down.