Escape to Witch Mountain

The best part of 30 years after the original, this slick and sprightly revamp ticks all the boxes with ruthless efficiency, introducing a dog at the halfway point to increase the ‘ahh’ factor for family audiences.

Race To Witch Mountain makes good use of leading man Dwayne Johnson (formerly known as The Rock), who copes easily with the physical rigours of his role as a speedy taxi driver, and continues to sharpen his comic timing.

He’s a gung-ho hero who greets each ludicrous twist with a withering look of disbelief, then gets on with the serious business of fighting an alien bounty hunter, breaking into a top secret government facility and saving the world from destruction.

Johnson plays Jack, a one-time wheelman for the Mob, who has cleaned up his act since getting out of prison, but is now under intense pressure to return to his criminal ways.

During a daytime patrol of the gambling capital, Jack is shocked to discover two children, siblings Sara (Robb) and Seth (Ludwig), in the back seat of the cab.

They offer him a bundle of cash to drive them to a remote cabin in the desert. Jack reluctantly obliges and en route, the taxi is almost forced off the road by federal agents under the leadership of Burke (Hinds).

Demanding answers from his passengers, Jack learns that Sara and Seth are extra-terrestrials, who have come to Earth to retrieve an artefact that will save their dying planet from destruction and halt an invasion of our third rock from the sun.

Completely out of his depth, Jack heads for a sci-fi convention, where Dr Alex Friedman (Gugino) just happens to be giving a lecture on Astrophysical Anomaly Detection. Together, they seek out the children’s spaceship, which Sara and Seth need to return home.

Featuring cameos from Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann, child stars of the 1975 film, Race To Witch Mountain delivers enough thrills and spills to hold our attention for 98 minutes.

Some of the effects are a little workmanlike – notably the fight sequence with the bounty hunter in the desert – but for the most part, director Fickman unleashes computer-generated fury with assurance.

Johnson gels nicely with his otherworldly co-stars, who initially speak as if they have digested an encyclopaedia, but gradually absorb the slovenly speech patterns of 21st century youth.

Hinds is a two-dimensional, pantomime villain but nothing more is required of him in a big budget film that keeps the tone light and airy leaving plenty of holes in the plot.