Dir. Mike Mitchell, US 2005, 99 mins Cast: Michael Angarano, Kurt Russell, Kelly Preston, Danielle Panabaker
This is a most enjoyable spoof on super hero and high school movies. Kurt Russell and Kelly Preston play The Commander (super strength) and Jetstream (super speed), who disguise their superpowers, when not actually involved in saving the world, living a day-to-day life of suburban conformity as Mr and Mrs Stronghold, not unlike their animated counterparts The Incredibles did last Christmas. With genes like that they have high hopes for their only son Will. What Will is trying to hide from them, though, is that as yet he is showing no sign of any superpowers whatsoever. Unaware of this, his father enrols him in his own old alma mater “Sky High”, a secret high school in the clouds for the children of super heroes. As in your standard American high school, there is the usual hierarchy, gangs of jocks and queen bees, exacerbated by the schools policy of dividing pupils according to their powers or lack of them, into heroes and sidekicks. Will and his best friend Layla (Panabaker), who modestly conceals her power over nature, are relegated to the loser sidekicks, until of course Will's powers - in an interesting metaphor for the onset of puberty - suddenly emerge and he and his gang save the school from an evil seeker after world domination.
Despite its similarities to terrestrial high school, with its bullying, rivalries, peer pressures and crushes -at one point Will abandons Layla's loyal friendship to chase after a glamorous senior (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) - things are often more interesting in an establishment, whose rules include "No smoking, no freezing, no bursting into flame" and some of the pupils' lessons and activities put you in mind of what goes on at Harry Potter's august academy. I could have done with more of Russell and Preston's neat send up of stressed out suburbanites and there are a few brief appearances from "Wonder Woman" Lynda Carter as the school principal, but in a high school movie, it is the kids around whom the story revolves. Angarano and Panabaker make an appealing couple and there is a noteworthy performance from newcomer Steven Strait, lead singer with the band Tribe when not acting, who plays a sort of rebel with a cause called Warren Peace, who can shoot fire from his hands and has it in for Will because The Commander and Jetstream defeated his super evil dad years earlier.
Carol Allen
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