Remember to Witch Mountain

Remember Escape to Witch Mountain? I enjoyed it as a child, especially all the powers the kids seemed to have. I bought a double-feature DVD (shock) of this and it's sequel, Return from Witch Mountain. Haven't re-watched them yet. But someday (maybe this weekend, the reason becoming more apparent after reading further).

Woke up this morning at 2 a.m. and had trouble getting back to sleep, so I thought I would surf a little, read some email, do my typical computer stuff for a bit. One of those daily things I like to do is the daily trivia question on imdb.com. On the main page are links to some trailers of upcoming movies. And today I saw Race to Witch Mountain listed as one of the movies. I wondered if it could at all be related to the aforementioned Escape, so I watched the trailer (what else would one do?)

Disney has done a remake of Escape to Witch Mountain, starring The Rock (aka Dwayne Johnson — what a totally ordinary, nerdish name for his persona, something I would never tell him to his face. Just kidding, Mr. Johnson. Friends? At least please don't pummel me, okay?) and two kids (the two kids from the original movies also make appearances here, as a waitress and sheriff). A remake of Escape is not something I would have high on my list of things to do (and probably not even on my list of things to do when I'm desperately trying to think of things to do), but after seeing the trailer, I'm pretty stoked to see it.

This certainly seems to be a decent-enough modernization of the story, though I'm kind of saddened that it appears you know the kids are aliens early on, certainly from the trailer. That was the hook for me in Escape, that these kids had these powers, and then you find out eventually they're aliens. Perhaps I'm misremembering; that's why I might watch this weekend to refresh my memory. Otherwise, it looks pretty rocking, another movie in a long list of releases this year I'm looking forward to plunking down some cash (more like transferring electrons) to see on the big screen.