"CATCH YOU FUCKERS AT A BAD TIME?"

Sky High

The last super hero movie of summer 2005, and maybe the last kids movie too, is Disney’s SKY HIGH. It’s directed by Mike Mitchell (DEUCE BIGALOW: MALE GIGOLO), with a script originated in the ‘90s by Paul Hernandez, later rewritten by Bob Schooley & Mark McCorkle (creators of the cartoon Kim Possible, plus they wrote 7 episodes of the New Kids on the Block cartoon).

SUMMER 2005It’s a play on comic book super heroes, but not based on any existing ones, so it’s your basic dollar store super heroes with standard abilities, generic names and no real origins, they just genetically inherited powers. It’s the kind of comic book movie where the opening credits have to be in comic book font and there are drawings that do not look worthy of a comic book that dissolve into the live action shots. You know – like a comic book! Have you seen these? A bunch of little squares with stuff drawn in them.

Michael Angarano (last seen in LORDS OF DOGTOWN) stars as Will Stronghold, a kid whose parents are the world’s most famous super heroes, The Commander (Kurt Russell, last seen [briefly] in JIMINY GLICK IN LALAWOOD) and Jetstream (Kelly Preston, FOR LOVE OF THE GAME). He’s about to start attending Sky High, a secret school floating in the sky for the children of super heroes. But he’s kinda terrified because he hasn’t developed super powers, which seem to be related to and/or a symbol for puberty. So he’s very self conscious.

Some of the other kids in the movie are his best friend Layla (Danielle Panabaker, MOM AT SIXTEEN), who has a crush on him and plant powers and doesn’t really believe in super heroing; his buddy Zach (Nicholas Braun, later in RED STATE), who swears his power is glowing but nobody believes him because it doesn’t show up in the daylight; Magenta (Kelly Vitz, later in SIMON SAYS) who has cool purple hair and boots and is a shapeshifter but  can only turn into a hedgehog; Ethan (Dee Jay Daniels, The Hughleys), a nerd who can give exposition and melt into a puddle; and Warren Peace (Steven Strait, later in 10,000 BC), a guy with fire powers who hates Will because The Commander put his dad in prison.

On the first day of school the kids have to go to the gym and show their powers to Coach Boomer (Bruce Campbell, whose other 2005 releases were ALIEN APOCALYPSE, MAN WITH THE SCREAMING BRAIN and the video game Evil Dead: Regeneration) so he can sort them into heroes and sidekicks, also called “hero support.” All of the kids I just listed except for Warren are sent to sidekick class, taught by Mr. Boy, formerly All-American Boy (Dave Foley, MONKEYBONE). Will sort of gets a preview for how the world treats sidekicks when he finds out Mr. Boy was his dad’s sidekick but neither of his parents ever mentioned him.

So there’s some teen drama from Will having to admit to his disappointed dad that he doesn’t have powers, and become comfortable with the idea of being “hero support.” Him and his friends are underdogs sticking together to deal with bullies and what not. But when he ends up in a fight with Warren in the cafeteria he suddenly unlocks super strength. This causes him to be transferred away from his friends into the hero class, which he’s sad about but also it’s amazing because the t.a. Gwen (Mary Elizabeth Winstead, THE RING TWO) offers to become his private tutor and then he has lunch with her and he’s uncomfortable about his friends not being able to sit with him but on the other hand he’s sitting next to Gwen.

Of course there is also a secret super villain plot which involves luring Sky High alumnus The Commander and Jetstream to the homecoming dance by giving them an award. When the generic sitcom thing happens of Will inviting Layla to her favorite Chinese restaurant and then forgetting about it because he’s with Gwen it turns into a nice subplot about how Warren works at the restaurant and turns out to be a nice guy and she goes to the dance with him to try to make Will jealous but it doesn’t turn into a competition, Warren actually becomes a good friend to both of them. It’s obvious but I liked it. I like a face turn.

It’s pretty clever about ways to do all the high school movie tropes in a world of super heroes. It does what it says it’s gonna do. Where does that fit into the 2005 state of comic book movies? I guess if you can make the very serious take like BATMAN BEGINS it’s also time to do the Disney movie for pre-teens. It’s obviously for people vaguely familiar with the concept of super heroes, it does not show the same concern for what comic book fans will think. The closest thing to a “one for the fans” is having Lynda Carter play the principal, Principal Powers. It’s really more interested in fitting in lots of comedy people (Kevin Heffernan from Broken Lizard, Foley and Kevin McDonald from Kids in the Hall, Tom Kenny and Jill Talley from Mr. Show, Jim Rash but before Community).

This was four years before the WATCHMEN movie but it’s got the same thing of feeling like a commentary on super hero tropes but it’s stuff that hadn’t really made it to movies yet. Or maybe this was just in time since it came out right after FANTASTIC FOUR. I thought of that movie because there’s a kid with stretch powers, there’s a kid who turns into a rock monster (animated), and Warren basically has the same powers as Johnny Storm except he can’t fly and you know he’s a bad boy because he has long hair. He’s a little like Jacob in the TWILIGHT movies, actually, but not as awkward. The digital FX are very cartoony looking – it reminded me of the end of CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY when the kids are walking away all stretched out. There’s a charm to how that look has dated.

I don’t really have anything bad to say about this one except that it didn’t do much for me. It was kinda cute, definitely painless, and I can see how it was probly pretty enjoyable if you were the target age. I think it was Winstead’s first time playing a boy’s ultimate crush, and obviously she does well with that, plus (spoiler) gets to have fun being evil at the end. The villains are really way more Power Rangers than comic book, but that’s fine.


Panabaker is also good as the charming best friend who Will should obviously pay more attention to but boys are dumb. Come to think of it it’s pretty wholesome – the unpopular nerds and weirdos get their glory, but it’s more about them being there for each other, the main boy makes up for his dumb boy mistakes and doesn’t have to turn into some macho dude now that he has been acknowledged for his super strength (and flying).

I know I knew SKY HIGH existed at the time, wondered if it was worth watching for Russell, did not as far as I remember know Campbell was in it – and he’s pretty well used. Obviously he knows how to play a comical asshole gym teacher whose super power is yelling. I vaguely remember hearing kind of good things about this movie from talkbackers or someone, but it didn’t really cross over much into the world of adults without children. It does seem to have been profitable, but not hugely so.

I guess the closest summer of 2005 comparison is THE ADVENTURES OF SHARKBOY AND LAVAGIRL IN 3-D, which I would say was more creative in its invention of super heroes, but inferior in every other aspect, from production value to actually being able to sit through without questioning the choices I’ve made in my life to end up being a guy who purposely watches these things. Since I’ve learned that quite a few people who grew up with SHARKBOY are still fond of it, I gotta assume there’s a following for SKY HIGH too. A decade-plus later there were reports of a sequel set in super-college, and then it was gonna be a TV series with all the younger characters reprising their roles, but none of that happened. I guess it’s none of my business if it ever does or not.


NOTES:

2005 shit:

The soundtrack is all ‘80s songs covered by current-to-2005 bands, for example the end credits are a band called Bowling for Soup doing a pop-punk version of “I Melt with You.”

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2025 at 6:59 am and is filed under Reviews, Comedy/Laffs, Comic strips/Super heroes, Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

15 Responses to “Sky High”

  1. Curt Russell as the superhero dad is an absolute hit. One of the few movies where he can be charismatic and slightly goofy at the same time – and it works.

  2. ^Not to be that guy but have you ever even seen TANGO AND CASH?

  3. HELL FUCKING YES! When you announced the summer of 2005 series, I immediately checked if it was a summer release, because I knew that this would be the only chance for you to actually review it.

    I absolutely love it. When it came out, it was for a while my comfort movie, as the kids say today. Whenever I was bored, I put the DVD on. Obviously before it came out, I didn’t think much of it. It just seemed to me like one of those SPY KIDS rip-offs like AGENT CODY BANKS. Then I randomly read on IMDb who was in it, but as a huge KIM POSSIBLE fan, I got really excited when I realized that they wrote it!

    Although they actually just rewrote a script that was floating around since the 80s, from a guy named Paul Hernandez, who after this had for a while a script named LIQUID KARMA, with Dwayne Johnson attached, in development, but that never happened obviously. According to official sources, the biggest contribution from Schooley & McCorkle was adding a new first and a new last act, which probably explains why the middle is a bit weaker than the rest, but in an interview they said they were mostly hired to make it funnier, so most of the jokes came from them too.

    And yes, there is a lot of “Y’know, for kids” stuff in it, like the teen relationship drama or the “believe in yourself and know who your real friends are” angle, but this thing is such a good time! There are so many minor gags that make me still laugh, like when Will got his super strength and he and his dad accidentally hug each other too tight. Oddly enough the one, really dumb joke that always made me groan (“I’m not Wonder Woman”) seems to be the most popular among everybody else who saw it. It’s also also fun to see how subtle they added some character work in. Cloris Leachman really gets a lot of mileage out of her one scene with how heartbreakingly she explains what is up with Ron Wilson, bus driver.

    And can we appreciate the stunt work here? Even though nobody here gets even a bruise, how they land on tables and bounce off (or fly through) walls looks incredibly painful for a tween comedy. On the DVD extras they explain that they built a special rig with the help from the technicians from Cirque Du Soleil (!), so that the camera always moves in sync with the stuntperson and we get the best shot of them. (Impressively used during the moment when Warren gets thrown through a wall while Campbell and McDonald have a conversation, although I have no idea if Steven Strait actually did the stunt or they used some CGI editing for when he gets up and walks away.)

    Of course in retrospect it’s fun to watch the thing after over a decade of superhero flicks as the dominant source of entertainment. The look is very “heightened reality”. It’s obviously all very bright and colourful, with a certain amount of dutch angles, but it isn’t going all Schumacher BATMAN. It’s a nice look, although of course no respectable superhero movie would dare to look like that today.

    And it’s impressive what a good hand the casting director had in picking the teen actors! Not just with Angarano and Panabaker, but I was quite surprised to learn that “Zack Attack” is now a busy character actor and a three time Emmy nominee.

    In conclusion: Go watch SKY HIGH.

  4. I remember liking this alright when it came out and I saw it on DVD. Haven’t revisited it, but I’m pretty confident I’d have the same take as this review if I did. One memory I have is when the cover of ‘I Melt with You’ plays at the end the lyrics are changed to ‘Being friends with you was never second best.’

  5. It is kinda interesting btw, that Bob Schooley is these days best known for being a prolific and VERY angry political social media personality. (Don’t worry, he’s one of the good guys.)

  6. I remember my thoughts on this being:

    1. It felt like a weird stretch that the parents didn’t realize their kid didn’t have powers (even considering the sitcomy tone).

    2. It felt like a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too cop-out that the kid eventually got powers. A purely sidekick-pov movie would’ve been more fun I think.

  7. I in no way want to be an advocate for AGENT CODY BANKS, which in addition to being as mediocre as you’d expect in all the ways you’d expect, also has a surprisingly tasteless/racist scene involving a Japanese substitute teacher (a scene that would play particularly badly, or perhaps worryingly well, right now) and moments of ableism which actually did controversy at the time.

    It does, however, have a few somewhat legit action sequences; after seeing one set piece on display at a hi-fi store I ended up watching the slightly better and more credible but honestly duller film STORMBREAKER due to mistaken identity. It’s also surprisingly violent, needing to be slightly trimmed to get the UK PG-13 equivalent on its initial release, and with Hilary Duff committing at least one straight up murder.

    Believe me, I don’t want to be one of those guys who calls ultra mainstream films CRAZY because of some minor elements, and I’m not. But I admit BANKS retains a certain fascination, thus I pounced in the opportunity to talk about it.

  8. Fine, I watch AGENT CODY BANKS. I only saw a few bits and pieces on TV once and it really didn’t hold my interest.

  9. I was the same which is why when I saw one of the action scenes elsewhere later I assumed it was STORMREAKER.

    But it’s also not very good and I don’t actually recommend it, there are just a few minor points of worth and/or interest.

  10. That’s good enough for me.

  11. It’s funny because I just saw a post on Bluesky with a picture of Warren Peace and I thought, “Is that Holden from The Expanse?” So I looked it up and it was. I had forgotten this movie existed and wondered if it might be kind of fun. Then Vern reviewed it. What a world.

  12. After reading up some more on AGENT CODY BANKS, this one jumped on top of my watchlist. I believe Pacman when he says it’s not good, but it was produced by Madonna, written by Scott Alexander & Larry Karazewski and before Harald Zwart took over directing duties, it was supposed to be directed by Vic Armstrong! Who himself was a replacement for the original director Jason Alexander!?! I once watched a BEETHOVEN DTV sequel because it was from the director of PROM NIGHT 3 and featured Jeffrey Combs and Udo Kier, so obviously I’m hooked.

  13. Wow, this movie has famed Tolstoy biographer Warren Peace? (Author of Leo Tolstoy by Warren Peace)

  14. I’ve always had a soft spot for this one. My kids were the perfect age for it and I fondly remember them flipping for it. The cast is likable and it just works.

    One thing that never made sense to me was that the Will’s parents seem unaware that he hasn’t shown any superpowers in the run up to the first day of school. Will’s understandably freaking out about it, and you’d think at some point mom or dad would be at least a little curious about what powers, if any, their kid has. They seem pleasantly surprised later when he turns out to be strong but what did they think he could do before that?

    Anyway, it’s a cute movie that does its job.

  15. He was apparently very good at faking superstrength. In the first scene we see his dad walking into his room, while he pretends to finish his workout with some barbells that look like they weigh a ton. We don’t know for how long he’s been faking it, but on his first ride to Sky High he asks Zack if he finally got powers during summer vacation, so we can assume when summer started, he was also pretty open about not having his powers yet, because some of his friends didn’t get them either. No big deal. Then maybe he started to panic the closer he came to his first day of school and only began to pretend a few weeks or even days ago. Also his parents may be caring, but they are also busy with their dayjobs and superhero stuff. We only see them at home for breakfast or late in the evening. So it’s not like they are hanging out together 24/7, which might make it even easier for him.

    And of course when they learn that he actually is strong, they already knew that he was just hero support because of his lack of power.

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