Teen Witches Try to Avert Vacation Disaster in Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie

I haven’t really kept up with the hit tween shows on the Disney channel, but when the Wizards of Waverly Place movie surfaced as an instant viewing option on Netflix, I decided to give it a whirl. I figured I was in for something family-friendly and relentlessly cheesy, and that’s pretty much what I got. I wouldn’t call this movie, written by Todd Greenwald and Daniel Berendsen and directed by Lev Spiro, a theatrical quality film, but it’s a fairly entertaining way to spend a couple of hours.

The Russos are an unusual family. Dad (David DeLuise) is a wizard who gave up his powers to marry the love of his life, a mortal (Maria Canals-Barrera). The kids inherited their father’s abilities but are in the process of honing them. When the family takes a sunny island vacation, the kids are supposed to leave the magic at home, but that does not end up happening. Instead, they need to use all their ingenuity and magical ability to counteract the effects of a wish inadvertently made by snotty teenager Alex (Selena Gomez). In a fit of aggravation with her mother, she wishes her parents had never met, and the wish actually works, leaving her and her brothers – responsible Justin (David Henrie), the golden boy of the family, and young goofball Max (Jake T. Austen) – scrambling to repair the damage.

While Max focuses, Back to the Future-style, on trying to bring his parents together, Justin and Alex put aside their differences to team up on a cross-island quest to secure the magical object needed to unwish that fateful wish before all three siblings disappear. It’s fun to see the differences in the parents’ personalities; both seem a lot more free-spirited as unattached adults, and laid-back Dad is particularly entertaining. I’m sure that the contrast would be even more amusing to someone who watches the show regularly.

The most engaging part of the movie is Alex and Justin’s quest, which has many of the elements of an Indiana Jones movie. They must battle their way through secret codes, dangerous precipices, the inevitable rope bridge over a chasm and, naturally, a creepy cave full of perilous secrets. There’s ample adventure here, and the new sense of closeness that Justin and Alex develop in the process is touching. That brother-sister relationship is the most compelling element of the movie for me.

Of course, there’s plenty of slapstick, and many of the effects are pretty goofy-looking. Some characters are there almost entirely for comic relief. That’s particularly true of Archie (Steve Valentine), a street magician who is after the same enchanted object as Alex because he hopes to restore his parrot to her rightful form as a beautiful woman. He’s a rival, then, but never a very alarming one, and his antics are amusing in a broadly comical way. Most of the dialogue is pretty cheesy, so that may bring laughs whether they were intended or not. Same goes for the special effects.

Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie is a fairly nonsensical movie, but it’s also a nice celebration of family, and the lush island setting makes it more appealing. While most adults will probably roll their eyes a bit, this is a fairly fun flick for the target audience.