This is a high-tech, high-budget action film for kids. Lots of explosions, lasers, a dog called 'Junkyard', shiny blue alien equipment — and Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson.

And so long as you don't attempt to take this film seriously, it's a great night's entertainment.

The story is relatively simple. An ex-con Las Vegas cab driver (played by Johnson) is already having a bad morning when two slightly creepy but very pretty blonde children appear in the back of his cab. They produce a wad of cash and tell him to drive out into the middle of nowhere.

Fortunately for the two children, Seth and Sarah, Jack Bruno is a pretty stand-up guy, really. He drives them out to a desert location, and instead of driving off with a 500% tip, he follows them into the spooky abandoned house to make sure they're okay. And then stumbles into a whole aliens-are-coming-to-take-over-your-planet conspiracy.

Fortunately for Jack and the pretty alien children, there is a UFO convention in town and they enlist the help of the charming Dr. Alex Friedman. And so they attempt to save the world (and themselves).

It's a cross between 'Roswell', 'Predator' and 'Close Encounters', but it's still clearly a Disney movie. With spunk. There are some charmingly funny scenes and some real tearjerker moments, but it manages to steer clear of the overboard sappiness that most Disney films fall into.

I watched the DVD on my laptop — which hated the new-fangled 'Disney Fast Play'. Designed to make your movie watching experience more streamlined, it in fact sent my computer into paroxysms of protest.

The special features were vaguely typical of the genre — a couple of bloopers and some deleted scenes. One perk of the special features was a 'walkthrough' of the deleted scenes. Director Andy Fickman provides a short explanation of why each scene was deleted from the final cut — which I found fascinating. Often DVDs just a lump a whole lot of redundant scenes in one go and I find myself going 'Why did they delete that? That was so awesome!'. If you're interested in the more technical aspects of making the film — which I am — then that feature is fabulous.

It's a great sit-down-with-popcorn-and-just-be-entertained movie, but it's astoundingly predictable. You can literally see the build up to the cliché's and the same old plot lines, but the kids will love it and even the adults will have a laugh at some of the witty dialogue and The Rock's facial expressions.