Lame "high"

By Noel Vera

I couldn't believe some of the reviews Mike Mitchell's "Sky High"
has been getting--and from reputable periodicals, too: "family
friendly;" "well-designed for kids;" "the best (John) Hughes farce
Hughes never made." Since when was flavorless pap good for one's
children? The movie is essentially Brad Bird's "The Incredibles"
drained of much of its humor, drama, and emotional edge (not a big
fan of the Pixar movie, but it does do the job of telling its story
well), the remains hung on the big screen for the five-year-olds in
the audience (physically and mentally) to pick on.

"Sky High" follows the story of one Will Stronghold (Michael
Angarano) as he boards the bus for his first day in high school--
your standard-issue yellow bus that takes a sudden right turn into
an incomplete entrance ramp, flying off to the wild blue yonder.
Turns out Will is the son of two famous superheroes--The Commander
(Kurt Russell) and Jetstream (Kelly Preston), and the school he's
going to is Sky High, a kind of secret educational facility designed
for their children (how secret, I wouldn't know--seems to me
everyone is barely paying lip service to the idea of double
identities). Will, unfortunately, has a problem: he doesn't know
what his super power is, or if he has any--he's been faking hints of
it to his dad. In physical education class, the problem hits the
fan: Coach Boom (Bruce Campbell) has lined everyone up and demanded
that they each go up front to demonstrate their special abilities.

At first it looks like it's going to be an interesting working-out
of a classic family problem: how do you live up to celebrity
parents, or parents who excel at their chosen professions and expect
you to excel in the same profession as well? If Will had to deal
with his powerlessness for the rest of the picture, if the parents
had to deal with their disappointment in their strictly mundane son,
if everyone learned how to live with that lack, perhaps find
themselves re-defining along the way the real meaning of the
word "superhero" and the entire basis for Sky High, maybe the
picture might have been about something.

As is, Will does have powers--he's just a late bloomer--and the
picture spins off in a far less interesting direction, where two
girls fight over Will's affections ("Some Kind of Wonderful,"
anyone?): Gwen (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the super-popular, super-
beautiful school president, and Layla (Danielle Panabaker), Will's
longtime best friend and a kind of effortless hippie who doesn't
believe in classifying people as hero and not-hero, and doesn't
believe in using her powers (the ability to make vegetation grow and
bloom) for violent or unnecessary ends. He also has to contend with
Warren Peace (Steven Strait), who suffers from near-Tolstoyan angst:
he's the son of a superhero mother and supervillain father, and he
hates The Commander for jailing his father--and Will, by extension,
for being The Commander's son.

Layla and Peace are actually some of the more interesting characters
in the picture: they suggest possibilities that the movie doesn't
really bother to explore (opt out of this superhero paradigm, or be
a conflicted rebel loner); their conversation together at the
Chinese restaurant where Peace works as a busboy possesses a quality
the rest of the picture lacks: sanity, and a sense of proportion (I
was hoping the two of them would come to their senses and date each
other).

But no; no interesting directions, no complex or uncomfortable
truths, no unexpected twists (what twists there are in the plot you
can see coming for miles): this is safe-as-houses entertainment, and
about as interesting. No wonder, since the script is by relative
newcomer Paul Hernandez, and whatever freshness or innovation he had
in mind was probably thoroughly ironed out by veteran Disney writers
Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle (they're the writing team responsible
for such classic Disney products as the two "Aladdin" sequels,
the "Lion King" sequels, and episodes of "Kim Possible"). Mitchell,
who did "Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo" and "Surviving Christmas" (Ben
Affleck's painfully unfunny holiday comedy), directs the movie like
a campy comic book (emphasis on "camp"), without any trace of style;
Joe Dante could have done this sort of thing in his sleep and still
make it visually interesting (only he probably wouldn't; the
material is much too wholesome). The music for some strange reason
is mostly forgotten songs from the '80s--don't know why, could be
Mitchell trying to go for a John Hughes vibe or parody or something.

The movie does have a handful of supporting performances that shine
out--that, in fact, are better than anything else in the picture:
Bruce Campbell (Sam Raimi's "ubermensch") bullies and harangues
students as the superhumanly loud Coach Boomer; Lynda Carter is as
sexy as ever (even if she hides her figure in conservative business
suits) as Principal Powers; Cloris Leachman is as demented as ever
as Nurse Spex--when she smiles her cheerful smile while things fall
apart around her, you are witness to a particular brand of insanity
(going back to early Mel Brooks) that the movie could really use
more of.

But I suppose the honor of best performance--and the picture--really
belong to Kurt Russell. He's paid his dues, starting out as a child
actor in a number of Disney movies, many of them pretty dire; he's
grown as an actor, I think, and here he's a lot of fun, playing the
world's greatest superhero. He tosses his lines out casually,
strides through the room like visiting royalty, and when asked to
act disappointed, or dismayed, puts on the necessary face like a
patient father indulging his spoiled son. He treats the whole
picture as something of a lark, something if not actually
contemptible then more than a little disposable, which is probably
more than the material really deserves.

(First published in Businessworld, 8/26/05)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)