 | |
List Price: $19.99 | | Label: WALT DISNEY VIDEO
Salesrank: 17541
Released: March 10, 2009 |
| Our Price: $13.36 |
| Used Price: $6.13 |
|
MPAA Rating: G (General Audience)
Media: DVD |
|
Editorial Review:
In this thrilling sequel to Disney's Escape to Witch Mountain, automobiles mysteriously fly and humans float in thin air as sinister masterminds Christopher Lee and Bette Davis unleash a diabolical plan. The entire city of Los Angeles teeters on the brink of nuclear disaster when the greedy criminals manipulate a young boy's supernatural powers for their own devious gain. But the youth's sister and a streetwise band of truants join forces in a desperate attempt to save the city from destruction.
Bonus features:
All-New Pop-Up Fun Facts
Making The Return Trip
The Gang's Back In Town
Disney Kids With Powers
The Eyes Have It
Lost Treasure: Christopher Lee, The Lost Interview
1978 Disney Studio Album
Audio Commentary
Return from Witch Mountain Special Edition Reviews:
DVD witch mts 
2009-10-07 - Same as with the other the acting is poor. A good movie if you are age 10.
no charm the second time around 
2009-06-20 - The Number One movie of the week is Race To Witch Mountain. But I can't handle the idea of substituting kindly Eddie Albert with The Rock, even if he has made a string of family films. So why not check out the gentle original from 1975, whose special effects seemed so nifty at the time. (Heck, I was even excited by the scene where the kids sat in bed and communicated with each other...telepathically!) You knew the brother was going to be prey to bad influences in the sequel Return From Witch Mountain ($19.99 each; Disney) because he was wearing a horrible turtleneck and in general the very modest magic had gone. But you can never go wrong with a story where kids feel special and misunderstood. I asked my sister the night after seeing the first movie if we should try to speak to each other telepathically when we went to bed and she told me I was a loser. But she cheated by saying it out loud. Fine for the very young. Visit me at michaelgiltz dot com.
What is this manufactured tripe?
2009-05-09 - When Disney made "Escape to Witch Mountain", they were at the height of their creativity. It had a well thought out plot in stages within the realm of imaginary probability. We could relate to the two characters of Tia and Tony as they searched for their true home. All the characters evil or good had depth and we could relate to them.
Instead of expanding on this well-designed base, all we get from this movie is twaddle. The characters are unbelievable exaggerated not funny not memorable and far from real. All we get is one situation after another where ridiculous kids from an improbable environment do in memorable things to and for each other. In the end, we gained nothing and wasted precious time it is better spent elsewhere.
This presentation does contain some great actors have done marvelous things in their time but now looks like it was just a vehicle for out of work actors.
Not even Blu-Ray or voice over commentaries can save this claptrap.
Escape to Witch Mountain Special Edition
The Parent Trap (Vault Disney Collection)
Old Disney Escape From Witch Mountian DVD 
2009-04-09 - Was not sure the Grandkids would like this but they loved it!!! Great buy!
Sorry Disney, this one was a disappointment
2009-04-06 - This is the 1978 sequel to Disney's 1975 science-fiction-adventure movie, Escape to Witch Mountain Special Edition. In the first movie, we met Tony and Tia Malone, two orphans with extraordinary abilities, like telepathy and telekinesis. It turned out that the siblings were aliens, whose spaceship had crashed, but they are reunited, by the end of the movie, with their uncle.
In the sequel, Tony and Tia are brought to Pasadena so that they can get a chance to see how people live on Earth. This goes badly pretty quickly, thanks to an evil scientist, who is experimenting with a mind control device when he sees Tony perform one of his extraordinary acts, and decides he can became even more famous if he can control Tony's mind. The evil scientist's wealthy patroness sees Tony as a potential goldmine.
Meanwhile, Tia loses contact with Tony, visually and telepathically, and tries to find him. She is helped by a street-gang of boys who are nice but not nearly as tough and mean as they want people to believe they are. She does not find much success and ends up pitted against her mind-controlled brother. Along the way, a big-hearted but inept truancy officer and a goat manage to help the alien siblings survive and try to find each other.
The first Witch Mountain movie featured engaging child actors, an interesting premise, and some action, but weak dialogue and unimpressive special effects. Three years later, after the world had seen the startling spectacle of the first Star Wars movie, the sequel not only showed no improvement, but I see it as a weaker movie than its predecessor. Why?
In the first film, Kim Richards (as Tia) and Ike Eisenmann (as Tony) sounded like they were reading lines read by someone who had never spoken with a child. In the sequel, Ike Eisenmann fares somewhat better, sounding a bit more natural, but Kim Richards has line after line of "Who the heck wrote that?!" lines. The gang of boys who help her also work off a poor script, although Christian Juttner (as Dazzler) manages to overcome his lines to come off okay.
To accompany the child-actors, we have a trio of villains, with two of the roles played by accomplished actors. Christopher Lee portrays Victor, the evil scientist bent on academic fame and glory through ruthless research. Bette Davis portrays Letha, Victor's not-very-bright but very greedy patroness, out to get rich on Victor's research, at the expense of Tony. Both Mr. Lee and Ms. Davis are given lines to speak that are exactly what you would expect their characters to say. Anthony James, Letha's nephew and Victor's inept flunkie.
Given the level reached by special effects when this movie was made, the effects in Return From Witch Mountain are disappointing. In the bonus features, they explain how they used strings and cranes to do the telekinesis and levitation effects. While you do not see any of the strings or cranes, I think that it is obvious that process in effect included them. The levitation in no way resembles flight or any natural movement. The levitation effects in the Harry Potter films were definitely better.
The film also has a credibility issue at times. Suspending disbelief regarding aliens with paranormal abilities is one thing, but it is another thing altogether to expect that a flying saucer could fly in and out of the Rose Bowl, twice, with no one seeing it. And, there is a scene, early in the movie, where Tony displays his telekinetic powers on a public street, and there is no one around, except the two villains, to see the act. Plus, no one is there to see a child being abducted, in broad daylight?
With the sequel, we again have engaging child actors in a movie with an interesting premise -- two alien children with paranormal abilities trying to experience everyday life on Earth -- and plenty of action. However, we again also have a script with stilted dialogue for all of the children, or sub-par special effects. This movie just doesn't work for me.
Oh, except for Alfred the goat! Alfred does his every scene very smoothly, and gives the most credible performance in the movie.
I received this movie, free from Disney, in exchange for an honest review.
-- Chris McCallister, author of Coming Full Circle
