Film Review: “The Race to Witch Mountain”

Jack Bruno (Johnson), an ex-mobster working as a taxi driver, is hired by two mysterious kids (Robb and Ludwig), only to discover that they are aliens in search of their crashed ship. With the help of a space-obsessed scientist (Gugino), the trio evade government agents and an interstellar assassin to get the kids home. Though far from perfect, Race to Witch Mountain is a fun and sometimes funny family-centric romp. Johnson is gruff and snarky, and plays the leading man role nicely. Robb and Ludwig start out fairly flat, but warm up a bit by the end. Gugino is easy on the eyes, but rather underutilized. The script, while very predictable, provides a surprising amount of quantum physics and political talk, given the intended audience. The pacing is generally light and quick, though the movie nearly grinds to a halt in the middle when the script drops in a big wad of exposition. Being a very action-oriented movie, those sequences are well-executed and easy to follow, bucking the recent trend of frenzied camera work and super-quick editing. Sci-fi references abound, and the humor is varied enough that most anyone will find something to like. A competent reimagining of a classic family movie.