Saturday, June 11, 2011

Sky High (2005)

  As a celebration of the anniversary of her birth (and the First Anniversary of the Christy Experiment) she gets two picks for the month of June. 

This was her first and it segued nicely into a very superhero-filled weekend. 

It's a cute little paint-by-numbers Disney film about a kid named Will Stronghold whose parents are both superheroes and his trials in navigating high school as a freshman.  A freshman at a school for superpowered kids when he hasn't shown even a glimmer of having powers of his own.

His dad (Kurt Russell) has super strength and his mom (Kelly Preston) can fly.  His best friend, Layla, (Danielle Panabaker) can summon plants and even his nerdy friend Zach (no one you've heard about or care about) can glow but Will can't do jack. 

Thanks to this delayed puberty, Will ends up relegated to "Hero Support" with the other rejects by the always awesome Bruce Campbell (as Sonic Boom, the gym teacher).  Sidekick class is hosted by Dave Foley and the Principal is Lynda Carter, who is still looking damn good.  Unfortunately, superhero high school is still high school so there are bullies (a super-fast guy and a stretchy guy), mean girls (a replicating cheerleader) and the obligatory hottie that's out of his league (Scott Pilgrim's Mary Elizabeth Winstead).  As an added complication, Will has to deal with the son of a supervillain his dad locked up for four life sentences, the cringingly named Warren Peace. 

Of course drama abounds with a shadowy figure threatening the future of all mankind and so forth and so on.  Also, homecoming. 

The special effects are integrated pretty well with the exception of the hand puppet they use to represent a plot-point-crucial guinea pig.  The gopher from Caddyshack looked more lifelike.  Other than that, this was a fun little superhero movie with some good turns by movie veterans like Russell, Foley, Campbell, and even Chloris Leachman as the X-ray-visioned school nurse.  Suitable for family viewing if X-Men is a little too violent for your tastes.

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