Sky High Aims for the Middle and Hits a Bullseye

Sky High is like a return to the old days of Disney live action movies. I'm talking about movies that you have to be at least in your 30s to remember: movies mainly starring Dean Jones, Hayley Mills and Kurt Russell. And there's the magic words.

Kurt Russell's young Disneyfied self makes a cameo in Sky High in the pages of a high school yearbook. That face brought back memories of Kurt as a computer that wore tennis shoes and a student that sometimes you saw and sometimes you didn't. Before he became famous all over again playing Elvis and sleeping with Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell was the biggest teenage star in movies. Or at least one of the biggest. His career has had its ups and down, and there seems to be a trend when it's up.

In the movie Sky High, much like in the movies Big Trouble in Little China and Tango & Cash, Russell here is poking gentle fun at the very concept of an action movie hero. He seems to understand it's really silly to pretend you are some big macho kickass guy when you're running around wearing makeup (and maybe a cape). Although his performance here isn't quite up to the standard of his John Wayne -is-a-moron performance in Big Trouble in Little China, he is the glue that holds this slight premise together.

The idea of a training school for superheroes and their sidekicks is a great idea for a MadTV sketch, but for a movie it could be a little weak. Thankfully, the makers threw in some offbeat casting and ideas, tossed in a little moral lesson that doesn't die of overkill and cooked up the most enjoyable live action Disney movie for kids since I can't remember when.

In addition to Russell, one of the other high points is Dave Foley's Mr. Boy, who used to Russell's sidekick and is now a teacher at Sky High. Foley is far too talented to be wasting away in has-been hell hosting poker shows. (And by the way, can someone please tell me just when the heck poker became a spectator sport!!!). His scenes are bustling with the pent-up ambition of a true has-been trying to prove himself. As Bart Simpson would say, the ironing is delicious.

Everyone's favorite B-movie star Bruce Campbell shows up in the movie as well, doing his patented, but nevertheless welcome, turn as a slightly smarmy and slightly admirable character. I read somewhere where someone suggested that Campbell would have been the perfect choice for that ill-fated updating of Kolchak the Night Stalker on ABC. Yes, he would have.

The teens that populate the movie are all just fine, even if there doesn't appear to be any stars waiting to break out. My favorite was Nicholaus Braun as Zach, whose superpower-a gentle glow-immediately relegates him to sidekick status instead of superhero status. Every time he appeared on screen, I started laughing.

In addition to the goofy plot of kids saving the world, the movie also offers a nice little lesson in sticking by your friends even if they aren't cool. It's been done a zillion and six times, but somehow you don't really mind. The makers of this film are so at ease with the material and so willing to just let it be what it is that you can't fault them for not aiming higher. Besides, any movie that offers up a superpower that exists solely in the ability to transform into a gerbil already has more going for it than the last five Best Picture winners.

Oh, and I almost forget: The guy who does the voice for Pleakley in Lilo & Stitch shows his face in this flick. Along with a truly enormous cranium. That right there is well worth the rental price, don't you think?