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BY MAGGIE SCOTT
A cab driver in Las Vegas can’t see too many happy-go-lucky conventioneers, even the ones dressed like Star Wars storm troopers.

Jack Bruno (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson) isn’t choosy about who he lets into his hack, but he’s not going to let you wave a weapon in the rear-view mirror and he’s not going to believe that a couple of kids waving a big wad of cash are not up to no good.

Easy-going Jack gets two out-of-this-world passengers in “Race to Witch Mountain,” Disney’s rework of its 1975 adventure, “Escape to Witch Mountain.” Sara (AnnaSophia Robb) and Seth (Alexander Ludwig) suddenly materialize in his back seat, provide Jack a “courtesy transaction” amounting to about 500 times the $720.50 meter total to drive them to an isolated shack in the desert somewhere east of the city limits and help former daredevil driver Jack play demolition derby with pursuing federal agents.

Led by the glowering Henry Burke (Ciaran Hinds), a man determined to secure the aliens who disappeared from the spacecraft that crashed in the Nevada desert, the agents get a taste of Seth’s ability to “control his molecular density.” Sara has the ability to disable internal combustion engines; as the siblings slip out of, not just the agents’ hands, but the gruesome grasp of a pursuing terminator from their home planet.

Once Jack has seen Seth deflect bullets and Sara read minds, including that of a dog they name Junkyard, he’s ready to believe the kids are not some whack jobs on a scavenger hunt break from the UFO and Space Expo 9 convention being held at Planet Hollywood.
But, they’re going to need help evading Burke and getting to the ship at heavily fortified Witch Mountain: one Dr. Alex Friedman (Carla Gugino), an astrophysicist convinced there is life on other planets and that space travel is possible using wormholes.

With living proof of extraterrestrial life in front of her and confirmation of how they traveled 33,000 light years from their dying planet, she is determined to help Jack help Sara and Seth get home to rejuvenate their world and stop an invasion of Earth. This being a Disney family film, the writers can’t give the ex-con Bruno anything resembling hard edges. As the material goes for laughs and messages, The Rock gets softer and softer, until he seems a bit neutered.

Thanks to the bland material, his amiable wit doesn’t have a chance to flex its muscle; and the humdrum car chase sequences are missed opportunities to impress his legions of impressionable fans, who will nevertheless race to the nearest theatre to catch The Rock in action.

Rated PG for sequences of action and violence, frightening and dangerous situations, and some thematic elements.

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