Column:

'Witch Mountain' suffers from questionable filmmaking

A terrible screenplay hinders solid acting efforts.

By Dan Moore

Published March 16, 2009

"Race to Witch Mountain" is, in the parlance of basketball scouts from time immemorial, a tweener -- it's almost a kid's movie, almost a chase movie, almost a road movie, almost a vehicle for the actor presently known as Dwayne Johnson to bust heads and finally, like the power forward who doesn't quite have the height for center or the finesse for small forward, almost entertaining, which isn't to say it doesn't serve its purpose. As a family thriller in the "Journey to the Center of the Earth" mold, one gets the feeling that Johnson and Brendan Fraser receive all the same big-tough-softy offers. It toes the tweener line for the express purpose of mostly pleasing most of the people.

Johnson -- aka The Rock -- stars as a cab driver who has the misfortune of picking up two teenaged aliens on a mission of the earth-saving variety. Johnson acts as their surrogate father for the duration, dispensing lessons and making pithy remarks whenever they do something he doesn't understand, and is eventually dragged into a chase with the kind of unnamed movie-government agents that speak in brief Raymond Chandler-grams, sans articles. Completed by a disgraced astrophysicist/romantic interest (thereby targeting the last demographic) our party races across Las Vegas to find a crashed alien spaceship before the government finds them.

The teenagers, bleached blonde and about as humanoid as aliens get, are simultaneously a calculated shot at the Disney Channel demo and an elegant solution to the classic alien-invasion plot-hole: they want our planet -- theirs is dying -- because they're exactly like we are, only more conveniently superpowered. The plot is unsatisfying when considered for any length of time, but as a string on which to hang the requisite road-trip moments and some spirited taxi driving, it works.

The acting is similarly workmanlike. No one is going to compete for a Daytime Emmy with this material, but nobody looks like they should be attending the Daytime Emmys, either. Johnson and AnnaSophia Robb (playing one of the aliens) stand out, along with Garry Marshall in a cameo appearance, doing what they can with what there is.

But if the targeting and casting is right, it's the screenplay and the direction that keep "Witch Mountain" from achieving family movie nirvana. The direction is only mediocre, but the script is legitimately awful; the alien diction is distinguished by the use of everybody's last name and not understanding contractions, and the plot's machinery is visible at every turn. When the characters, otherwise pleasant enough, are made to explain themselves to each other, the script hits the exact, terrible medium between earnest and ironic sentiment. Worst of all are the awkward attempts at knowing wit. Left without a sounding board for much of the film, there's nobody for Johnson to smirk at. The screenplay gets around this by having him mutter to himself, which makes the stale jokes even more off-putting. It's not this film's desire to be something to all people that sinks it; it's garden-variety sub-par filmmaking.