Kyrsten Brad
Senior HTF Member
The Movie Itself: First of all, I have never seen the original 1970s era Disney Witch Mountain movies so I could pretty much evaluate this movie on its own merits without comparing it to the previous releases. And overall, I was quite happy with this film and glad I included it in my Disney Movie Club introductory package. Watched it as a late nighter on our new Vizio 47" M-Series.
Well I'd say that as usual when Disney nowadays casts teen roles, they go for the lookers. Safe to say that Alexander Ludwig (as Seth) would sure make teen girls swoon and that AnnaSophia Robb (as Sara who does bear a passing resemblance to a young Lindsay Lohan) probably had teen boys fighting each other for her phone number.
Of course we have to have a romantic angle for Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's role as Jack Bruno and Carla Gugino (as Dr. Alex Friedman) fills the role nicely though their relationship took a little time to develop.
This is one of those films that tugs at the heartstrings towards the end as the two teen aliens warm up to Dwayne Johnson's Jack Bruno character. In fact Sara practically adopts Jack as a big brother at the end of the film. And the two teen aliens step up in one scene to protect Jack and Alex from a hail of machine gun bullets (yes the alien teens could stop bullets, sheesh!!). Jack & Alex end up as a couple at the end and we're all so happy by Jack's conversion from a Mafia getaway driver to a stand-up citizen.
IMDB Link on Race To Witch Mountain
The Technical Aspects .
Picture Quality: Well I give it 4.5 out of 5 on a 47" screen. Pretty much a decent Blu-ray transfer which from a recent film (2009) would be expected.
From IMDB:
Runtime 1 hr 38 min (98 min) Sound Mix Dolby Digital | DTS | SDDS Color Color Aspect Ratio 2.35 : 1 Camera Arriflex 435, Panavision Primo Lenses Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL, Panavision Primo Lenses Laboratory DeLuxe, Hollywood (CA), USA Technicolor Digital Intermediates, Los Angeles (CA), USA (digital intermediate) Film Length 2,778 m (Portugal, 35 mm) Negative Format 35 mm (Kodak Vision2 100T 5212, Vision2 200T 5217, Vision3 500T 5219) Cinematographic Process Digital Intermediate (2K) (master format) Super 35 (source format) Printed Film Format 35 mm (anamorphic) (Kodak Vision 2383) D-Cinema
Sound: Pretty much standard fare nowadays for a film filled with car crashes, explosions and mass machine gun fire. Sounded pretty good on my sound setup on the Vizio 47 (wired to a Aiwa stereo which delivers surprisingly good sound).
