You come to expect some things in the world Hollywood remakes.
Old TV shows like “Charlie’s Angels,” “SWAT,” and “Dukes of Hazzard” play upon nostalgia. “Friday the 13th” and other horror remakes come from a perverse need to see if they can make those old campy horror movies scarier.
Nevertheless, nowhere did I see a remake of “Escape to Witch Mountain. Was there a nostalgic need for it? I don’t know. I remember the movies (There were at least a couple sequels) from when I was young. They would show up at night on ABC’s perennial Sunday standard “The Wonderful World of Disney.” What else do I remember? A couple of kids with magical powers being chased by police heading for some scary mountain in the desert. I think it might have been the same mountain, but most everything else has changed, or maybe only the actors and the special effects have changed.
This time, the kids (AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig) are older, teenagers as opposed to the preteens I recall from the original, and they shanghai an ex-con-turned-cabbie (Dwayne Johnson) into helping them track down a science experiment that could stop a full scale invasion of Earth. Fortunately, there is a UFO convention in town (Las Vegas), and one of the leading experts on the theory of extraterrestrial life is in town, and she (Carla Gugino) is cute and willing to help them (and be Johnson’s romantic interest for the film). Trying to stop them is the Disney version of the Terminator along with a cadre of evil government agents (led by Ciarán Hinds).
The assassin is from the kid’s home planet’s military, which wants to force the invasion. The government agents, of course, want to capture and dissect the alien kids. Like I said, other than the faces and the FX, not much has changed. It is still just as exciting as you would remember a 70s Sunday Disney fill as being.
In other words, it was dull, predictable and generally bland. Even the presence of “The Rock” didn’t make it better. And as much as I hate to admit liking the ex-wrestler’s acting, Johnson has grown on me. Nevertheless, his role in the movie was just as unexciting as the rest of the film. On a side note, something did really bug me. As I mentioned, a UFO convention was featured in the film, but it was depicted more as a Sci- Fi convention with people dressed up like Stormtroopers and other movie aliens. However, UFO conventions and Sci-Fi conventions are not the same thing, and the two types of crowds don’t usually mix. I have been to both, and there is a difference. Of course, maybe in Vegas things are different, but I just felt the whole scene was one of the general layers of lackluster production that made this movie well below any quality rating I could give it.
If I had to give a suggestion on what to go see this week, I would have to tell you to go back and see “Watchmen” again.
