High School hijinks high in the sky. (Sky High (DVD))

Name: Ailran

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Product:	Sky High (DVD)
Date:	04.02.06 (167 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The setting and the idea. Adult actors are on top form.

Disadvantages: Fairly predictable,

Sky High is, at it’s heart, just another of the never ending line of teen high school comedies that the American movie system continually churn out. The target audience never seeming to get fed up with them, no matter how many they see. Occasionally they do have a good crossover appeal to adults (Clueless & Mean Girls) but generally speaking they have very few if any redeeming features for any out of their teens or early twenties, unless of course you really do want to relive your own teenage years.

Sky High is one of those bad ones, or would be if it wasn’t for the addition of super powers. See Sky High isn’t a school for normal teens, oh no! Its student population consists entirely of children of super powered individuals, a place where they can learn about their powers, the practical aspects of being a hero and the responsibility that goes with them.

Will Stronghold is the sun of the two greatest heroes on the planet… The Commander (Kurt Russell) and Jetscream (Kelly Preston). It is going to be his first day at Sky High and he is worried. His powers haven’t manifested themselves yet (a fact unknown to his parents), if they ever will, and he is worried what is going to happen to him.
This is because on the first day the school does a ‘powers’ test to decide whether students will be heroes or sidekicks. The tests are taken by Coach Boomer, the always impressive Bruce Campbell, and Will, naturally, ends up as a sidekick (or Hero Support as they like to be known!)

So we have the hero and his friends, the sidekicks (nerds/geeks in most films) and those who are classified as heroes (the Jocks/cheerleaders).
Will falls for the class babe, has an arch enemy (the wonderfully named Warren Peace who is very similar to Heath Ledger in 10 Things I Hate About You) and gets picked on by the jocks/heroes
As you can see we have the bog standard set up… nerds vs. jocks, a girl of the heroes dreams, the girl who is his best friend, the choice between real friendship and the superficialness of being popular etc. all the things in every movie of this type.

While the bare bones are identical to pretty much every high school movie the nature of the school makes all the difference. We don’t get the usual pranks played… well okay we do get the head down the toilet bowl gag… because the two bullies have their own powers to help them. Speed and Lash have super speed and stretching abilities respectively and they use them to torment the ‘Hero Support’ kids.
The lessons are miles away from what we are used to as well, no boring maths or science! Here we have building a freeze gun and learning the duties of hero support.

This is the kind of film I really should not enjoy. It doesn’t have the wit or bite of Clueless or Mean Girls and really and truly is not that great, but somehow the addition of this whole new basis for the tired old plot works just about enough to make it worth seeing, especially for the almost guaranteed prom dance ending! I do love superhero stuff so that did add a bit of bias to my thoughts, but by the same token I didn’t really like The Incredibles. Somehow Sky High manages to instil a sense of fun into it that sort of charms you as you watch it.

The acting in it is good enough, nothing special from the kids apart from Steven Strait as Warren Peace who plays his part as the tough guy really well.
On the adult side you have Kurt Russell playing an overly cheerful and back slapping dad and he hasn’t been as good as this for a long time. He wants to be the stern father but loves his son so much that he only pretends and he does this very well, his facial expressions show how good an actor he is.
Kelly Preston as Jetscream is given a lot less to do, the focus is really on Will and his fathers relationship more than with his mother.
The other two adults who have to be mentioned though are Bruce Campbell (Coach Boomer) and Dave Foley (Newsradio TV series and the voice of Flick in Bugs) as All American Boy, The Commanders old hero support and the teacher in the hero support class. A wonderful performance of regret and optimism!
Lynda Carter makes another appearance in a modern film, after Dukes of Hazzard, and seeing her as a heroine brings back youthful reminders of her as Wonder woman in the 70’s, and she really does look incredible seeing as that was 30 years ago.

There are a couple of really nice touches to the film. It has an opening that is done by voiceover and on screen comic book style frames, showing the story the voice is telling us (art by Kieron Dwyer is anyone knows him!). The film ends the same way with more comic book style art. Nice homage to the original source of superhero stories.

I’m not sure if it was intentional but the first time you see the school flying in the sky it looks incredibly like the base of Captain Scarlet in the original series, Cloudbase was it called?

The secret Sanctum of The Commander is another set I really liked, part trophy room and part games room it just looked like the kind of thing an ego filled hero would have, not the idol of millions, but then is that the point?

I would say that kids and people who like their high school movies will enjoy this a lot, I did much more than I expected to!

Certificate:PG
Running time: 100 minutes

Summary: High school movie crossed with super hero action!