Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie   Starring: Selena Gomez, David Henrie, Jake T. Austin, David DeLuise, Maria Canals Barrera, Jennifer Stone and Steve Valentine The Walt Disney Company RRP: £14.99 BUA0140801 Certificate: U Available 22 February 2010

The Russos family join together on a quest full of action and magical mishaps. While on holiday, Alex accidentally casts a spell that threatens her family's existence. Max tries to keep his parents together while Alex and Justin use ever trick they know as they search for the "Stone of Dreams" to reverse the spell and save their family...

Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie is a spin-off from the popular Wizards of Waverly Place TV series. As the show is ongoing, the producers made the same decision that a lot of shows that have a spin-off movie make; they move the regular characters out of their familiar surroundings and send them overseas on a holiday. This has the benefit of being able to start from scratch and allow new viewers to enjoy the movie without necessarily knowing anything about the characters.

The story is pretty simple. Annoyed with having to go on a family holiday, Alex accidentally casts a spell on her parents which results in them never having met. The race is on to undo the spell before Alex and her brothers vanish when the timeline catches up with them (because they haven't even been born). Eventually they discover that the only way to set everything straight is to go in search of the mysterious "Stone of Dreams".

A cross between Back to the Future and an Indiana Jones adventure is obviously what the producers were aiming for here. And to be fair, for a kids movie, for the most part this works. It's certainly a film that will be enjoyed by fans of the TV show.

Extras include Wiz Pix (10 min, 01 sec behind the scenes featurette) and Dylan and Cole Sprouse: Blu-ray is Suite! (4 min, 45 sec Disney hard sell ad for Blu-ray masquerading as a featurette). There's also some Disney trailers.

This is a movie that will no doubt appeal to fans of the TV show. But even if you've never seen an episode before you can pick this up quickly enough. As low brow, mindless kids entertainment goes this is pretty enjoyable.

7

Darren Rea