AnnaSophia Robb and Alexander Ludwig, centre, are alien teens who get help from a Vegas cabbie (Dwayne Johnson, right) in Race to Witch Mountain. (Ron Phillips/Disney Enterprises)

If you were a kid in the 1970s, you probably remember Disney's Escape to Witch Mountain (1975) and its sequel, Return from Witch Mountain (1978). These gentle family adventures featured Tony and Tia, a pair of cute little orphans with mysterious psychic powers who turned out to be benign aliens. While middling entertainment on the "Disney classics" scale, those films were pleasant enough, with old pros like Ray Milland and Bette Davis as comic villains and some enjoyably hokey special effects.

Race to Witch Mountain seems determined to pummel its young audience senseless with a flurry of car chases, explosions and bone-cracking fistfights.

Times have changed. Race to Witch Mountain, Disney's mind-numbing update starring wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson, is anything but gentle. The movie seems determined to pummel its young audience senseless with a flurry of car chases, explosions and bone-cracking fistfights. The extraterrestrial heroes are no longer young innocents but savvy, sexy teens renamed Seth and Sara. The director and screenwriters have gutted the original source material – a juvenile novel by Alexander Key – and re-stuffed it with cheap lifts from the Terminator and James Bond flicks. You'll have a hard time believing this is a family movie – unless your family happens to be the Sopranos.

Johnson plays Jack Bruno, an ex-con who has gone straight and now drives a cab in Las Vegas. He must have been one heck of a getaway driver, because his old mobster boss is trying to strong-arm him into returning to a life of crime. While Jack is busy beating up a few of the boss's henchmen, Seth (Alexander Ludwig) and Sara (AnnaSophia Robb) manage to sneak into the back of his taxi. They want Jack to drive them into the Nevada desert, and they have a massive bankroll – sucked out of an ATM via their supernatural powers – to pay the fare.

Jack reluctantly obliges and soon discovers the two are alien siblings trying to get back to their crashed spaceship. Denizens of a dying planet, they've come on a peaceful mission to obtain a means of saving it. Only thing is, their planet's bellicose rulers would rather invade Earth instead and have sent an armoured assassin called Siphon (Tom Woodruff Jr.) to stop Seth and Sara. To make matters worse, the U.S. Department of Defence has confiscated their craft and now wants to catch the kids as well.

Jack helps Seth and Sara dodge the hit man and the government bad guys (led by Ciarán Hinds) as they make their way to Witch Mountain, where the spaceship has been hidden. Along the way, Jack recruits a sympathetic expert-cum-love interest in Dr. Alex Friedman (Carla Gugino, best known to young viewers as the mom in the Spy Kids movies). She's an astrophysicist attending a Vegas UFO convention, where she sticks out as the lone voice of scientific fact in a babble of crackpots and fantasy geeks. (Alien-abduction pundit Whitley Strieber pops up in a cameo.)

In Escape to Witch Mountain, Toni and Tia were the main characters, and the film's adult lead, a lovably grumpy Eddie Albert, only showed up midway to serve as their human protector. This remake has been retooled as a star vehicle for Johnson, who is front and centre for most of its 99 minutes. Trouble is, Johnson is no more a real actor than Mickey Rourke is a real wrestler. The guy has the range of a cellphone in a subway tunnel. Still, you've got to pity him here. Screenwriters Matt Lopez and Mark Bomback give The Rock quips so lame that not even Chris Rock could make them funny.

Ciaran Hinds, centre, is a tenacious government agent in Race to Witch Mountain. (Ron Phillips/Disney Enterprises)

Neophytes Robb and Vancouver native Ludwig don't stand much of a chance, either. We barely get to know Sara and Seth before we're into the first of the interminable chase scenes, and their characters fail to develop later on. Besides, they give off a creepy vibe. Pallid blond ciphers, these sibs have less in common with Tony and Tia than with the freaky spawn of Village of the Damned. And their super-abilities are disturbingly lethal. Tony used his telekinesis playfully, even when thwarting bad guys. Seth, who can re-jig his molecular structure at will, stands in front of a speeding car, which is smashed to smithereens on impact as if it had hit a brick wall.

The movie doesn't even have the fringe benefit of fun supporting performances. Hinds, as the obsessed G-man, stalks through his role glumly. Cheech Marin shows up in a bit part as a mechanic, apparently just so the oldies in the audience can say, "Hey, isn't that Cheech Marin?" Sometime actor Garry Marshall does an insufferably hammy turn as a UFO maven living in an ultra-high-tech RV.

As we might have guessed, Marshall's camper eventually becomes airborne à la Escape to Witch Mountain – one of numerous nods to the original film. There are also small roles for the actors who played Tia and Tony, Kim Richards and Ike Eisenmann, who turn up briefly as a waitress named Tina and a sheriff named Antony. But if the filmmakers regard the old movies fondly, they make no attempt to recapture their whimsical charm.

Instead, director Andy Fickman, who helmed Johnson's previous Disney effort, The Game Plan, comes off like he's bucking to do the next Transporter sequel. If so, he's failed – the violence here is so badly shot and edited, it's just a visual hash. The only advantage this film has over the first two Witch Mountains is its special effects. The old matte technique used by Disney in the 1970s can't compete with today's CGI when it comes to creating things like flying saucers and campers. However, as last year's lousy remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still reminded us, even the biggest FX budget is no substitute for engaging characters and a strong script.

In his wrestling heyday, Johnson had a catchphrase: "Do you smell what The Rock is cooking?" I'm afraid that this time, it's just action-movie leftovers, disguised as a kids' meal.

Race to Witch Mountain opens March 13.

Martin Morrow writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.