"It's a fast and fun family film ride."

First they escaped to witch mountain, then they returned; now they're racing back -- with The Rock at the wheel.

Except the aliens in Race to Witch Mountain, a 21st century take two of Disney's 1970s Escape to Witch Mountain, aren't Tony and Tina. They're Seth (Alexander Ludwig) and Sara (Bridge to Terabithia's Anna-Sophia Robb). But keep your eyes peeled for the original duo, as Ike Eisenmann and Kim Richards both play minor parts.

The plot also veers from the John Hough classic, based on the Alexander Key children's book. It's most definitely a race -- not an escape, or a return, or a hike -- to Witch Mountain, the top secret subterranean UFO warehouse and alien autopsy lab of a covert government agency deep in the desert bordering California and Nevada.

Space siblings Seth and Sara, like most novice drivers, not having mastered the finer points of parking (for lack of any other explanation), crash-land their flying saucer in Nevada. Witch Mountain men in black locate not only their ride, but a footprint from which their magic military computers identify Seth and Sara as illegal aliens and commence pursuit.

Children though they may be, Seth and Sara, unlike Tony and Tina, don't have time for an earthly childhood -- so no room on their schedule for telekinetically taunting playground bullies with baseball mitts. Instead, the underage ETs make their entrance by inexplicably materializing in ex-con cabbie Jack Bruno's (Dwayne Johnson) backseat. In Las Vegas, as we're shown and told, a mecca for green-antennaed Space Expo geeks that's truly "like being on another planet."

Not being socialized in human behavior, Seth and Sarah shove a wad of cash in Bruno's face and robotically request he taxi them to a latitude and longitude where they must recover something on which the fate of their planet and ours rests. En route to their middle-of-nowhere destination, a demolition derby chase ensues with a convoy of government agents and inevitably, Bruno discovers he's been driving cosmic wonder twins. (Sara levitates some quarters and he believes.) Despite the danger -- and Seth's distrust of humans -- Jack decides to help the children, eventually enlisting the aid of adorably dorky and determined extraterrestrial expert Dr. Alex Friedman, aka Watchmen's Carla Gugino.

Also adorable and convincingly compassionate as an alien wise beyond her years is Anna-Sophia. Ludwig, not so much. Think a young Dolph Lundgren. But the star of this movie universe is undeniably Dwayne. His cinematic charisma is as big as his biceps. Hard and soft in all the right spots, he's a badass hero with heart, armed with world-weary one-liners and wicked comic timing.

Ride along with it all at race-track speed, and it's a fast and fun family film ride. But don't expect to ooh and aah too much over special effects. They vary from pretty good (an intergalactic Terminator dressed like Darth Vader meets Predator, Seth's Matrix-ish molecule-bending abilities), to pretty cheesy, circa Disney 1970. Think hovering colored lights that look like magic marker on an overhead projector. Were the filmmakers going for retro?

Not nearly as eerie as the original and perhaps not technologically up-to-date, this retake still has the spirit of the '70s original, though thankfully screens less like an LSD flashback, leaving me nightmare-free. (No more harmonica-phobia!). As for the children in the audience, only time will tell ...

Grade: B- (B for The Rock's big comic musk-cles)