Like Sky High itself, "Sky High" stays in the air throughout.

Victor Field

Way way back in the day (with apologies to the theme song for "Phil Of The Future"), Filmation made a live-action/animated series called "Hero High" about superheroic teenagers in their school days. Not that I'm accusing "Sky High" of filching this premise; this is far superior to just about anything Filmation ever did. It's also the summer's best superhero movie - more appealing than "Batman Begins," better written than "Fantastic Four," and more thrilling than either. It may not have instant cachet or Jessica Alba, but then again you can't have everything.

What this DOES have is co-writers Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle, who along with primary writer Paul Hernandez show that their terrific "Kim Possible" was no fluke - this movie has all the virtues of what some wags dubbed "Alias: The Animated Series" (which is unfair; Sydney Bristow's adventures are less consistent and arguably less plausible, and nobody on the cartoon was as useless as Lauren or Nadia); likable young hero with overachieving parents, sharp dialogue, action to spare, and a refusal to let a situation devolve into stickiness. (The movie also has series cast member Patrick "Puddy" Warburton as the voice of one major villain.) In this case our hero (Michael Angarano) has two of the world's most beloved superheroes, Steve and Josie Stronghold (Kelly Preston and Kurt Russell, back in the Disney fold) as parents, a high school where everyone but him seems to have superpowers, and the curse of being relegated to Sidekick ("Hero Support!") status.

Like "The Tick" and "The Incredibles," the movie's view of a world where superheroes are a given allows for some amusing observations and fun at the expense of the regular rules of superheroics, and it also deserves credit for not making Gwen (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) automatically more of a bitch than the Lisa Simpson-esquire Layla (Danielle Panabaker). True, there are some slight story flaws (and the tendency to slip in Wonder Woman references into Lynda Carter's screen time is distracting), but "Sky High" has such a strong cast (and frankly, anything that has Bruce Campbell - "SIDEKICK!!!!" - has at least one thing going for it) and is so consistently funny without encouraging us to not take the story seriously (though somewhat retro, not least in its song choices - every time young Stronghold sees Gwen a cover of Spandau Ballet's "True" starts up - this movie wouldn't have worked if it had gone for the 1960s "Batman" approach and camped everything up) that you just don't care.

Throw in a rousing score by Michael Giacchino, the "Save The Citizen" game, an exciting finale at the Homecoming dance, and a realisation that the movie's standard "Be Yourself" message has been delivered with considerably more subtlety and less condescension than, say, Filmation ever would, and the result is a movie that really deserves to do better than it's doing now at the box office. Maybe it should have had penguins?

"The sidekicks are requested to stop ordering hero sandwiches..."

score 8/10

Victor Field 7 August 2005

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1144881/