Sky High

Reviewed by Rich Drees

     Sky High has a great premise- the children of the world’s superheroes attend a floating high school where they train for the day when they will head out into the world to save it from assorted supervillains. It even plays with that conceit by transforming the standard popular high school filmic trope of the popular clique versus the socially awkward into a social divide between those teens with good enough powers to be full-fledged superheroes and those who are relegated to future sidekick, or as it is euphemistically called, “hero support”, status. Unfortunately though, Sky High never seems to fully live up to its promise.

     Will (Michael Angarano) is not your average teenage boy feeling anxiety over his upcoming first day in high school. As the son of two of the world’s most famous superheroes, The Commander (Kurt Russell) and Jetstream (Kelly Preston), great things are expected of him as he prepares to enroll into a special high school for the children of superheroes, Sky High. However, unlike the rest of his classmates, Will’s powers have yet to manifest themselves, an embarrassing situation that has him assigned to the sidekick studies instead of the hero classes his father hoped for. When Will’s powers do manifest themselves, he suddenly finds himself thrust into the popular Hero classes. Winning the attention of the most popular and pretty girl in the school, Will soon finds himself torn between his old friends in the sidekick classes and his new friends in the hero classes. All the while, a supervillain is making their own plans for the students of Sky High.

     The adult cast – Russell, Bruce Campbell and Lynda Carter as Sky High’s Principal Powers –have all appeared in various fantasy projects portraying heroes and their presence here helps reinforce the preponderance of heroes in the world. But these actors are used for more than just their nostalgia value, with the script giving them, as well as comic actors Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald and Kevin Heffernan, some nice character moments; small scenes that add dimension to what could have been flat caricatures. But the film rests on the relative newcomer-shoulders of its teen cast, who handle the job well.

     The writers have a good job fleshing out the movie’s world. Fantastical things happen with such regularity that giant robots rampaging through a city are relegated to mentions on the morning’s traffic reports. The problem is that while Sky High has put a unique spin on the elements of high school-set, social-clique comedy, it uses the same old, tired plot points that have been seen in films over the last couple of decades. Will is the outcast who does something extraordinary that becomes his invite into the upper social strata of the school. Of course that means leaving his old, nerdier friends behind, leaving him torn between the groups until the film climaxes at the big dance at the end of the year. Anyone with a passing familiarity with these types of films can readily guess the identity of the mystery villain of the film long before it’s revealed in the film’s climax. The writers here may gain a few bonus points for originality of concept, they still receive only a barely passing grade for its execution.