Review of Race to Witch Mountain (2009) by Chads. — 14 Mar 2009

Two stormtroopers get into a cab; two grown men all decked out for a space expo. Apart from setting off my internal Triumph the Comic Insult Dog alarm, this throwaway visual is loaded in semiotic connotations.

A certain breed of moviegoer will recognize the historicism inherent in the allocation of the costumed men and cabbie. Armed with prop guns, the underlying subtext of the scene can be construed as "Star Wars" coming to snuff out "Taxi Driver".

In other words, this unremarkable scene is enhanced by a filmic metaphor that explicates on how special-effects driven films consigned the sort of personal filmmaking practiced by directors of Martin Scorsese's ilk to a post-Skywalker grave.

When Travis Bickle was tormented with insomnia, he put himself on the night shift; whereas Jack Bruno(Dwayne Johnson), while working the heavy bag("Rocky" thrown into sharp relief from the Scorsese classic), declares that he can't sleep, agrees to the long fare(albeit the next day) proposed by two juvenille humanoids as a means of burning off restless energy.

A joyless affair such as "Race to Witch Mountain" is just one more progeny from the teat of a certain shark, that heralded the birth of the summer blockbuster, in which an emphasis on spectacle leaves storytelling and character development in the dust.

For starters, at some point, shouldn't the taxi driver tell the kids that its "just Jack"(not the too formal Jack Bruno), like the Sean Hayes character on "Will and Grace". "Race to Witch Mountain" spends nary a moment on developing a bond between Jack and the "kids"(following "Starman" as an example, the human should humanize the alien) that would justify the "E.

T."-like tears during their overblown parting. To its credit, however, the film has a self-awareness of its own disposability, a la "Mystery Men", when Janeane Garafolo said, "I would like to dedicate my victory to support.

..those who seek out independent films," has a mainstream film gazed at its own navel and critiqued itself. After Sara(AnnaSophia Robb) tells Jack that humans have the potential to levitate small objects, too; she says, "You humans haven't learned to use your brains to full capacity.

" True to its word, a film such as "Race to Witch Mountain" won't teach humans to use their brains to full capacity, and maybe Sara's observation was a subversive act of honest authorial commentary.