I loved the movie Escape from Witch Mountain. The heroine was telekinetic, and named "Tia," and had a cute purse with a secret map that she and her brother could follow to safety. It was perfect for role-playing in the school-yard. Unfortunately, the sequel was crap, but we just pretend it doesn't exist. Kind of like the third Anne of Green Gables miniseries where they abandoned the books entirely, sent Gilbert to Europe during the war, then had Anne following to play guerrilla when he was declared missing in action.
As I get ready to go to Comicon, however, I have learned by looking at their program guide that there is an update of Witch Mountain in the making called "Race to Witch Mountain." Well, it certainly isn't a unique observation that having heard somewhere that there are no new stories, Disney has abandoned even the pretense of trying and are just strip mining their existing intellectual property.
Race to Witch Mountain stars Dwayne Johnson aka "the Rock." Now, I have nothing against the Rock. (For one thing, when he's not calling himself "the Rock," he's perilously close to making the name "Dwayne" cool again.) I liked The Rundown, and Get Smart was reportedly not as stupid as it could have been. His other movies, however, seem to inhabit a certain level of predictable, not trying too hard, predictable, cute kids acting cutely, predictable-ness.
I am also still a little miffed that when I went to see Wall-E, Disney made me sit through an ad for something called Hollywood Chihuahua. Shudder.
