by Jean-Michel Desmeules

Created on: March 30, 2009

Disney is Disney: it's OK now, it was great when I was a kid and it was actually very good when my parents were children themselves. So let's face it, it's going downhill. It's quite simply a fossil! Not really surprising considering the cut-throat competitors in animation and childrens' movies of today. Still, they could profit from taking a step back, getting some perspective on themselves and some new ideas. Putting some extra hours in their projects couldn't hurt either - something Walt Disney did to begin with.

They are the originals though and I realize that I am speaking against a household name an army of parents are willing to fight "to the death" for, but I must express the lack of quality becoming the standard in their productions, specifically the newly released "Race to Witch Mountain". I was accompanying someone who was eager to see it as she had seen the first version Disney made: Escape to Witch Mountain. For my part I had not seen nor heard about the original, I knew nothing of the story or how it was originally made: I was a blank canvas you might say. I was receptive, but expected nothing, certainly not what was delivered

It starts like any late Disney movie: basic character presentation and out of nowhere initial setup. No great mind at Disney headquarters questioned the lack of information the audience may need to identify the characters and their situation adequately. Rather, they settled for an easy few minutes intro much like most kids sitcoms on major television networks. From then on, it goes from bad to worst as the story itself scarcely makes sense. I'm sorry, but even if it's a movie about Aliens the story needs to have some structure, at the very least for us analytical minds coerced into this dreadful waste of a film!

Each and every scene of this movie, each one, is a stereotype of ANY movie about aliens ever made. They introduced no new ideas and the basic sequences of events are exactly the same as in any of the ploys of any such movies made before. They pushed the stereotypes on the characters as well; starting with Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson who plays the reluctant hero cabby who comes, of course, fully equipped with an overwhelming emotional urge to help children, something any cabby would have all the while driving two lone children in the desert. His cab, can outrun powerful SUVs, police cruiser, government cruisers and even a space craft, like any yellow tin can cab would. There's a scientist (Carla Gugino) shunned by the

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