| Written by John Shea,
on 04-08-2005 07:45
|
Published in : Reviews, Movies |
It's tough to describe the aggravation in watching this movie ping-pong back and forth between amusing secondary characters/situations and an excessively cliched main story.
Sky High has a nifty premise, a high school for kids with super powers. Kind of like Professor Xavier's school in the X-Men movies, but a lot less serious. Young Will Stronghold (Michael Angarano), is an incoming freshman. His spot at the school is assured due to his parents being the world's top superhero team, Commander (Kurt Russell) and Jetstream (Kelly Preston). Unfortunately, Will has yet to show any signs of having superpowers himself. Arriving at school, he and the other freshmen go through a process in which students are sorted out as either heroes or sidekicks depending on the powers they exhibit. By nature of having no powers at all, Will is dumped in Hero Support training. It's a major embarrassment to his father, or it would be if Will had the guts to tell him. Luckily old Dad is too self-involved to notice his son's puny normal strength. Eventually Will's powers emerge, making him a star in the school, attracting the attention of a beautiful senior, causing him to ignore his long time friend Layla. Layla of course has a major crush on Will but according to the laws of bad movie plots, she can't admit it to him and he is far too dense to notice. Also according to the laws of bad movie plots, Will must start to become a big jerk and forget all of his friends because of his sudden fame and popularity. It's a fairly shameless rip off of the Teen Wolf movies. And the plots of those movies (nearly identical between the two actually) were hardly the height of originality themselves. Pretty much all scenes relating to the main plot were generic and tedious. What saves this movie from being seriously savaged are the superhero elements and the secondary characters. A fair amount of cleverness is shown integrating super powers into a high school environment. The bullies have the advantage of super speed and stretching to help make life miserable for the geeks. The cheerleader with an over inflated sense of self-importance has the ability to replicate herself, allowing her to be a one woman gang of tormentors of the less popular. None of this is massive standout stuff but it does add some nice texture to the movie. The real stand out is the cast of secondary characters. Former members of the Kids in the Hall comedy troupe Dave Foley and Kevin MacDonald play American Boy and Medulla respectively. One is the teacher of sidekicks and the other teaches mad scientist class. Individually they are constantly stealing scenes and together they get many of the movie's best jokes. Bruce Campbell plays the gym teacher Boomer. He's also responsible for sorting out the freshmen. He too steals scenes and also makes weak ones bearable. Cloris Leachman gets a brief scene as the school nurse. Wonder Woman herself, Linda Carter, plays the school's principal. Paired with unknown teen actors, these character actors dominate their scenes, providing much needed respite from the banal main plot. The special effects seemed at about a TV series level, rather than summer movie. Some of it is very cheesy looking and other parts are simply passable. Set design is uninspiring. The soundtrack, loaded with covers of popular 80s pop tunes is a bit mystifying. The kids this movie is aimed at probably don't know these songs but the critics surely will. I'm not sure what they were thinking there. The young cast may not be able to stand up to their elder co-stars but that's not to say they do badly. Anganaro has an easy going manner and affable charm that makes him easy to take, if not exactly noticeable. Danielle Panabaker and Mary Elizabeth Winstead are both easy on the eyes and Panabaker in particular flashes a bit of quirky charisma. She could be someone to watch down the line. Steven Strait does a good imitation of a brooding James Dean type, something that could easily take him a long way. Sky High is typical Disney live action fare. It aims squarely at a young audience and works hard not to offend. It succeeds at this just fine. But I suspect if you look back in a few years, the only thing you'll likely remember from the movie is one of Dave Foley's comments.
- John Shea
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