REVIEW: Race away from messy 'Witch Mountain'

Have you ever strolled into a modern art exhibit and found yourself standing in front of some paint splattered canvas, muttering under your breath, "Heck, I could do that!"

You may have the same reaction to Disney's shameless resurrection of its time-honored (though hardly sacred) "Witch Mountain" franchise, a film so incompetently directed and poorly written that it insults kids' intelligence, not to mention the adults who brought them.

AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig are Sara and Seth, alien children who crash-land on Earth in an effort to recover a piece of evidence that will save their dying home world (they've polluted their planet to the point of inhabitability, don't you know) and exonerate their embattled scientist parents.

It's a task that would be a whole lot easier if they weren't being chased by an extraterrestrial bounty hunter and a cabal of U.S. government spooks (led by Ciarán Hinds) intent on dissecting them.

Their only help is Jack Bruno (Dwayne Johnson - don't even think of calling him "The Rock" anymore), a convict-turned-cabbie, and a beleaguered UFO specialist (Carla Gugino) named Alex. Oh, and a dog, too - it is a Disney movie after all. As the group races from Las Vegas to the Nevada desert (and back again ... and back yet again), the government, gangsters and one very persistent bounty hunter converge to prevent them from reaching the fabled Witch Mountain and their waiting spacecraft.

Little do the villains know, if the children fail to get off the planet, it almost certainly means an alien invasion of Earth.

Director Andy Fickman directs with all the sophistication and elegance of a sledgehammer.

His incoherent action scenes (the film was co-written by Mark Bomback of "Live Free or Die Hard" fame, who obviously believed this film should be similarly paced) work kinetically though hardly intelligently.

While there are some nice touches (such as setting some of the action in a sci-fi convention populated with weirdly costumed participants), overall there's not a creative or original frame to be found.

Admittedly, I sometimes feel that they shouldn't let adults review kids movies. It can be difficult to see past your own adulthood when viewing a family film.

It's easy to lose perspective and

wonder whether even your most beloved childhood movies were terrible and you simply weren't mature enough to recognize it. And that's when you see something like "Coraline" or "WALL•E" (or anything by Pixar, frankly), and it snaps things back into perspective. Kids deserve far better than this dreck, whether they recognize it or not.

DETAILS

RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, Carla Gugino, Alexander Ludwig, Ciaran Hinds
Director: Andy Fickman
Theaters: Hollywood, Tinseltown, Carmike, Chapel Hills, Cinemark
Rating: PG (for sequences of action and violence, frightening and dangerous situations)
Running time: 1 hour, 28 minutes

GRADE: C+