Nov 18, 2008 07:00 AM
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San Francisco, 1:41 AM
Wed Feb 10
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The brand new reboot of the Disney's Witch Mountain series is packed with CG effects, The Rock, UFOs, shiny lights . . . oh and Master Chief. Or was that Boba Fett? Either way they've managed to cram a ridiculous amount of crap into this kiddie movie that was once a treasured memory of mine. While I actively support Dwayne Johnson's continued ability to get work, I'm having a really hard time accepting the fact that the alien children stranded on Earth can walk through walls and stop a SUV with their tiny prepubescent bodies (and nary a harmonica).
Race To Witch Mountain has a similar plot to the Mountains of its past. A couple of kids with telekinesis are stranded on the planet and entreat a kindly cab driver (Dwayne Johnson) to get them back to Witch Mountain where their spaceship is before the evil government can kidnap them and use their powers for evil. But apparently that wasn't good enough this year so they added Master Chief to hunt down and kill the little tykes with his Texas Chainsaw Massacre sounding gun.
Don't get me wrong, I love kiddie scifi movies. Most of the time they're light handed fun that stretches the boundaries of imagination (like in Flight of the Navigator and the one where Kirk Cameron is a robot and his dad is Alan Thick). But this franchise reboot is such a slick version of a classic it's like if you gave The Apple Dumpling Gang automatic assault rifles and sent them out on an anti-terror mission.
Plus it has to be said again: They spent all that money and not a single freaking harmonica puppet dance? Kids these days.
Here's some old-school Witch Mountain harmonica action:
Race To With Mountain comes out on March 13, 2009
Send an email to Meredith, the author of this post, at meredith@io9.com.
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