"Race to Witch Mountain" (quality rating: 7 out of 10)

Director: Andy Fickman

Screenwriter: Matt Lopez, Mark Bomback, Andy Fickman

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, AnnaSophia Robb, Carla Gugino, Ciaran Hinds.

Time: 1 hr., 39 min.

Rating: PG (violence, scary, dangerous situations, disturbing thematic elements)

Good family fun with almost non-stop action. And most of the time it actually works at many levels.

Brazenly starring a 12-year-old boy and girl as space aliens in order to help market the film, "Race to Witch Mountain" has enough time-tested Walt Disney technique and basic content to make it a very manageable family sci-fi flick. Saturated with big-scale EFX and demolition derbies, much of it is almost monotonously repetitive in tone. There is fantasy, magic, telekinesis, molecular manipulation and all the usual inconsistencies of supernatural power manipulation.

And darned if Dwayne Johnson doesn't handle his lines with a serviceable comic value.

Mom and pop can expect titters from more than a fair share of pompous government agents, a smattering of silly mob goons and a few serious sci-fi concepts about the fate of Planet Earth.

In polished technique, of course, Disney has never done anything less than world class. The sci-fi marvels come off seamlessly. The plot values are ingrained with just enough universal appeal to make you appreciate that you could have spent your precious life's moments in more wasteful ways.

The high-octane adventure thriller (right from the start), designed as almost a satire on the genre, contains many a joke upon itself.

So, at the start, a UFO has landed. A Homeland Security agent, Burke (Ciaran Hinds) is bearing down on the site with total military backing.

Meantime, over in Las Vegas. It happens that a certain ex-con cab driver, Jack Bruno (Dwayne Johnson), will enter the picture. The poor guy is really trying to go straight but, in that oft-told story, mob thugs need his services and try to recruit him as a getaway driver. Right now he's just trying to do his job. One fare is Dr. Alex Friedman (Carla Gugino), an astrophysicist who's to give a lecture at a UFO conference.

Next day his fares will be two pre-teens, Sara (AnnaSophia Robb) and Seth (Alexander Ludwig), who, unbeknownst to him, are actually extraterrestrials who came off that UFO. It had been later seized by Burke's crew and moved off to a top secret U.S. government installation hidden deep within Witch Mountain.

The two kids can read minds, perform magic and do telekenesis. They figure they need Bruno's help to evade the SWAT teams and, of course, getting wiped out by a terminator agent from their own planet.

The government agents and the mob will add considerable spice to the action.

With some medium heavyweight warnings about the fate of Earth and an overall classy film quality, give the film a decent salute for competent entertainment.


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