Sky High Movie Review: Soaring High School Heroes and Sidekicks

If you think Hogwarts is the only secret school for extraordinary kids, well there's also the heroic children's world of Sky High. This film is a hybrid superhero movie: The Incredibles meets the X-men via Harry Potter. It may be a Disney flick with a big celebration of superhero clichés; but it is entertaining for the very reason that it never claims to be genuinely superior. It has a mediocre and formulaic script and story but it is an engaging family movie.

Exploring the lives of emerging superheroes during the time called "coming of age," it is a lightweight adventure that dwells into the themes of puberty, popularity and family acceptance (living up to the issues of celebrity parents or parents who excel at their chosen professions and expect their children to excel in the same field as well).

The story builds up at a secret school up in the clouds named Sky High, the elite school for kids with superhero parents and superpowers themselves. The freshmen group rides a bus towards Sky High and gets a sight of cool gadgetry and awe-inspiring superskills amidst parental battles, peer pressure and teenage love.

Living their HS life in a cloud-floating school for the super-powered, the teens are at the peak of discovering their superpowers: a rock monster, an acid spitter, a glow in the dark boy, a vegetation commander, a beautiful and popular senior technopath, two bullying boys with superspeed and super-elasticity, a snooty cheerleader, a dangerous rebel with flammable arms, morphers into animals, beach balls and puddles, and lots of other super-teens. The exaggerations are further seen with the professors including the forgotten-sidekick formerly known as All-American Boy and a dorky "mad science" teacher with a gigantic brain.

Living up to the people's expectations, Will Stronghold (Michael Angarano) is pressured with the fact that his father, the Commander (Kurt Russel), and his mother, Jetstream (Kelly Preston), are the world`s most legendary superheroes. At Sky High, the freshies are divided into two classes by a cruel gym teacher (reminds us of Hogwarts' Sorting Hat): the Heroes and the Sidekicks/Hero Support. Initially, the mundane Will joins the ranks of the Sidekicks as a late bloomer who apparently shows no signs of any special powers inherited from his parents.

Upon hitting the peak of his superhero puberty, he finally inherits his dad's colossal strength and even his mom's ability to fly. And his outcast days are over as part of the Sidekick class whose gifts aren't adequately impressive as far as the school standards is concerned.

The movie kicks off with bright, comic-strip panels and tries to wrap up in the same way. It is a combination of mild teen melodrama, quirky characters and superhero fantasy revolving around the tragedies of high school life. The discrimination within the superhero hierarchy (heroes and sidekicks) involves both emotional and practical concerns. It manages some undertones like putting certain catch phrases to come up with a politically correct term for the sidekicks like "hero support."

The scene transitions include classic use of tilted camera shots and contemporary B-movie style of CGIs that heighten the movie in a not so distracting amount. The effects are seemingly spent in a limited budget having no big-time intro and finish. Ironically, it works for the film's advantage as there is no much distraction from the plot mechanics. The superhero costumes are deliberately "action-figurey." The script is completely dependent on formula, superhero conventions and standard teen movie clichés but its undemanding tone gets a certain charisma to the young viewers.

As the inevitable villain plot endangers Will's parents and the whole Sky High, he and his teenage superfriends (a group of freshmen sidekicks plus his former arch-rival Warren Peace (Steven Strait), take the hero's path to save Sky High.

Sky High is classic Disney filmmaking. It crosses the superhero saga with a kiddie-flick charisma designed to bring delight to kids. This is a bright, fanciful and warm-hearted Disney film for a family day.