SKY HIGH review

SKY HIGH is better than I dared dreamed it could be. Most of you out there know that I pre-set expectations pretty high for some movies, sometimes pretty low. Just a few days ago I was writing about my hopes for W.D. Richter and STEALTH, then upon seeing that film, I realized that it was ass. Rob Cohen had disappointed me on that level just once before, with DRAGONHEART – a film I dreamt would relaunch fantasy – instead it provided an excuse for

a nap. With SKY HIGH – there wasn’t much to really reasonably set my hopes high with. The director, Mike Mitchell… He’d done DEUCE BIGELOW – which had moderate laughs, mainly from Eddie Griffin, but then… I’m not really a Rob fan. Then there was SURVIVING CHRISTMAS – which opened for a blink in the wake of the Bennifer disaster and was on DVD nearly 3 weeks later. OUCH. There wasn’t really a sign of life at this station.

Then there was the cast. This was where there was geek gold. Casting Kurt Russell and Bruce Campbell in the same film – there’s a genius at work there. Having Kurt play the world’s greatest superhero and Bruce playing the egotistical coach at a superhero high school that places you in your two-tier social strata of HERO or SIDE KICK… well both of those were pure gold… potentially. Then there was Lynda Carter as the Principal – sigh, that could be great. Then there was the KIDS IN THE HALL casting – wouldn’t it be great if they had good material to play with? Then there was Patrick Warburton as the voice of the main bad guy. Any geek worth their salt that loved his TICK would be in fits of glee over that casting. But….

This wasn’t a film about grown ups – this would be a DISNEY film about high school life – a genre they’re known for pretty much fucking up on a regular basis. Their high school comedies feel about as authentic as BARBIE & KEN usually. And who the hell were these kids? I wasn’t really familiar with any of them. If this film succeeded or failed – it would rest firmly on these teens… and that’s an awfully fragile plank to balance one’s hopes on… Too often, this is where films fall apart.

Ok – so what about the writers? First there was Paul Hernandez. Who? Well he's a writer that wrote a great little script called INSTANT KARMA that he's going to direct that is being produced by DIGITAL DOMAIN. He wrote this as a spec tv series idea - but it turned into a film. There there were the writers that were responsible for KIM POSSIBLE, which thanks to having a crazy CARTOON NETWORK addicted nephew… I’ve watched and think… well it’s pretty damn fun. I felt that if this movie worked on the level I hoped and dreamt that it would… having TV toon writers behind the scenes… well it could be genius. Writers of cartoons are the single most denigrated area of writers in the industry. Studios, not usually known for writer respect, tend to shrug these guys off as sub-humans, but I’ve often felt that if you were wanting to make perfect family films bristling with untethered imagination. These “cartoon writers” could do it. If you take the really fun animated series on TV – these guys and gals that write them are under such a strict set of rule systems that writing PG feels like you were set free. At least in theory. I was just hoping that they’d hit the same sense of fun and pacing that KIM POSSIBLE had. Later I found out that Paul came back in to do more work on it. Disney had had other writers trying to sweeten and sweeten to the point of vomit - but I'd heard Hernandez kept it going straight. Together with the Kim Possible writers we got the film I was about to see.

Lastly – my hope was tied up on Michael Giacchino. He wrote the best score of 2004 with THE INCREDIBLES. The Oscars, with their head clearly checking a spastic colon, ignored and didn’t nominate a brilliant score. I didn’t want him to do a score that reflected the same 60’s vibe as was deliciously done in THE INCREDIBLES – instead – I just wanted something that worked perfectly with this concept. Something that when Kurt did his thing… felt heroic. If he did something as great as he did for THE INCREDIBLES… holy shit that’d rule.

Then there were rumors. I’d heard that some of the folks from SAMURAI JACK and THE CLONE WARS had storyboarded the action sequences of the film… that is one to kick the saliva glands into full speed thinking about. Then there was the rumor that the songs were all going to be 80’s tunes, that Mike Mitchell was wanting to create a superhero John Hughes-y feeling world. Again – how f’n cool would that be?

So… How’d they do?

Absolutely perfect. Ok ok… the fx are not perfect, but they are. This isn’t “the real world” this is a world where the morning news’s traffic report can be affected, and apparently often is by GIANT EVIL ROBOTS, where evil would be rulers of Hawaii erupt the great Volcano to destroy it all… This is a world where… you would need a floating Superhero Academy somewhere… up there… in the sky. Away from the curious eyes of mankind. A place where heroes were groomed and sidekicks were made. Where you studied the diplomacy of post heroic accomplishments, the science of ray gun creation, the sports of heroes and villains, the hero support of sidekicks… taught by an ex-great sidekick, played by Dave Foley named, “Mr Boy” who does sentence diagrams that read like, “Holy ________, _____ MAN!”

First off – all those geek gods in this film, they all absolutely fucking rule. Kurt Russell is note perfect. He’s an aging father… still kicking ass and taking names… dreaming of the day where he and his son can kick evil’s asses together. He wants so bad for his son to get the same thrill of societal adulation. Kurt’s every line in this feels like pure Kurt. His last line… HILARIOUS – though if you read it, you’d think… what the hell, how could that be great? Well, I bet the writers didn’t even dream it’d become a classic line… But Kurt put the pauses in the exact right places and his delivery just made the audience frickin scream.

Bruce Campbell… well for one, he’s got a legitimate part in this. This isn’t like a Sam Raimi superhero film, where he has a blink and you miss it amount of screen time. Here he has enough time to create a full on character that absolutely relishes in tormenting his “heroes and sidekicks.” Think about it for a second. Here’s a character… that like your High School Coach would get the pure joy of essentially breaking down students like R Lee Ermey. These kids… they’ll be the Supermans and Batmans of tomorrow – and this is the nightmare of the coach that padded their egos, gave them their complexes and knocked them with humility. Bruce is gold in this.

Take Kevin Heffernan – he plays the bus driver, RON WILSON. Surely a throwaway character. But there really are not any throwaway characters here. We get to know that he’s the son of Superhero parents… that never got his powers. He’s the son of two lollypops that became just the tongue depressor of the world. He so wants to be in with the cool kids, to be THE son that his parents wished they’d had. Instead he drives the bus with all the enthusiasm of Auto… he’s got business cards and pathos. What do ya want?

Then there’s Kevin McDonald as the big brained man with phenomenal science beyond mortal comprehension. His dry lines are said with a bitter relish of a great intellect that knows for all his genius… he’ll never be the cover hero. And he knows that though he may be the guy that has saved the universe from collapsing starting at sub-atomic levels… that well… the puny minds of the masses would never comprehend that, cuz… well it didn’t involve throwing a punch. But… he’s ok with it, cuz he knows what he knows and.. well he knows you don’t. Heh.

In fact all the adults, with the possible exception of Kelly Preston – it isn’t that she’s bad, it’s just… she doesn’t have a part nearly at the level of the other characters. Had the kid been a girl – she’d be the dominant parental figure here – but Kurt always pushes her concerns to the side. When she sternly wants to talk about something their son did wrong at school – Kurt takes him to the secret base beneath their suburban home and well does what any dad of a High school quarterback does… dotes upon him. “That’s my boy!”

Speaking of “Boy” and Girls – how are they?

Dead on. Miracle of miracles – the kids don’t suck… not only that, but their parts are written with all the delicious sense of fun and relish that the adults are. It reminds me, not so much of HARRY POTTER – mainly because Harry is set within the alien landscape of a British School Academy – which culturally has never really resonated with me. This reminds me more of BUFFY, but frankly I prefer this. That isn’t meant to be an insult at Joss Whedon and BUFFY lovers. I really dig the show, but just at a plaintive level – I prefer SUPERHEROES to Vampires & Witches. It’s a personal taste thing. We all know I love Vampires and Werewolves, ahem. But as a fan of ADVENTURE comics and the various SUPERBOY issues from the sixties – I love THE LEGION OF SUPER HEROES – but even more than the League, I loved the rejects. The kids with powers that just… well, they weren’t MON-EL, ya know? Folks like MATTER EATER LAD or BOUNCING BOY. The “GEEKS” of the Teen Hero World. Ones that just kinda GLOWED. It’s like – I loved METAL MEN – but in particular I loved MERCURY, I mean – what a kinda useless metal to make a robot out of. I mean, at room temp – he’s a fucking puddle. That’s great.

This really has the feel of that. What if you put the JUSTICE LEAGUE kids the X-MEN kids in with all the “useless” misfits and you just denigrated them into being “Hero Support” and if kids like Johnny Storm and Wolverine just fucking tormented their lives.

If a sidekick girl loved a Superhero boy? If a kid that always felt like a sidekick became a hero and had a shot at a real Supergirl? What if Zatanna shacked up with Batman to make Superman jealous? And the thing is – the people that wrote about these questions actually thought about how Batman would feel about being used to make Superman feel jealous, and they got the answer right.

Ya know – it seems that FANTASTIC FOUR’s success with the public is based upon the public’s desire to see something that was just plain fucking fun. Well, my problem with FANTASTIC FOUR was while it was trying to be fun, it just wasn’t fantastic fun. THIS ISN’T JUST FUN, IT’S FANTASTIC FRIGGIN’ FUN! There’s so many densely funny levels of humor… from just stuff that’s on the chalkboards, hanging in lockers, in the Nurses’ office, over the load speaker at lunch, whispered during a game… It all just works.

This film works at the exact same level as films like GHOSTBUSTERS, BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, ELF & GALAXY QUEST. After the film, the entire Austin AICN crew went out for Bar-B-Que – mainly because of a throw-away line delivered early in the film, “My mother talks to animals, she says they don’t like being eaten.” Anyway – we went and we just started going into full on geek overload. To give you an example – We started talking about how the ridiculous powered kids in this reminded us of the ludicrous super canine rejects from KRYPTO the show on Cartoon Network – and I was talking about how much I loved “HOT DOG” the ridiculous Dachshund with heat powers that operates from a space based hydrant – and how I wish these characters had really been in the D.C. universe. Then Father Geek begins to go into how they were in a GIANT SIZED ADVENTURE as a throwaway supporting story and how he remembered them. Now – I swear I’ve read nearly all the silver age ADVENTURES, ACTIONS, SUPERBOY, JIMMY OLSEN, LOIS LANES, etc – and I didn’t remember it. Of course I was also 8-11 when I was reading those, so I call Paul Dini – who, to my humiliation, says my Dad is right. UGH!!!!!! And the table all high fives Father Geek and I went home to Overstreet to see if I could find when and what issues the Canine Space Patrol first appeared.

IF – you want to have that sort of post-film evening. Where you sit around with mates and get into geek minutiae in regards to obscure weird superhero arcania.. well this is right up your alley. I just absolutely love this film. I’ve been in a geekgastic overflow ever since. In fact… right now I’m in agony cuz my net is down – and I’m writing this whole thing without the ability to fact check via IMDB – not able to go into the Chatrooms or the Phantom Zone to share my sheer geek enthusiasm for this fucking wonderful film. My service provider says sometime this morning (Wednesday) I’ll be up and able to hook back into the net, but I can’t wait. I have to share how much I loved this thing.

I mean – characters that you just knew were going to suck when they get introduced don’t. Not only that, they may very well become your favorite characters. There’s subtlety at play here that ya just won’t believe. Stuff like… during a study session at our main kid’s house which is suddenly interrupted by Kurt in full on hero costume walking into the living room. Now mind you. Imagine this – if the absolute dregs of the superhero universe were sitting around chatting about how to prepare for a mission that involved the undead…. And suddenly SUPERMAN walks in. Now these are kids that just well, this is all who they absolutely dream they could be. And here he is… Now – Mike does a really cool thing here – and diffuses the light creating a soft focus just on Kurt’s suit… which gives it a look of just glowing. I call this effect, the Alex Ross Effect – for real, he looks like an Alex Ross living and breathing hero – and it’s just kinda cool. The scene has Kurt asking the kids about their powers – and… well, unfortunately – they’re… well, these are the dregs man. They’re just not up to snuff, ya know? And Kurt listens to it all through a smile, but just in his eyes – you can see… He just kinda feels bad for these kids… they got the short end of the stick – and he’d never tell them that, he’d never say that – it’s just the thought going on in his head. He gives them all a bit of encouragement – and then heads into the kitchen – his son comes in – and decides to fess up about his lack of powers – and folks. The scene is fucking killer. Imagine telling your father, SUPERMAN, that you’re a sidekick type of guy. That you’re no hero, but that’s alright – cuz being the sidekick – it’s important. And all your “loser” friends hear you. And when you get back to the meeting… there’s a sense of awe, cuz you’ve finally taken your first real step to being a hero… at least in their eyes.

That’s just one scene and it’s fucking a killer. The film is FILLED with them. And I just don’t understand why Disney didn’t show this thing at Comic Con. I mean – had they brought in Kurt Russell and the whole cast. Had they done 3 screenings over the whole convention weekend. The buzz on this thing would be like the soundtrack to a Bert I Gordon film about Killer Bees. Mike Mitchell is now officially on the map. This is someone to watch. I hope to god this movie kicks fucking ass at the box office. It absolutely deserves to. This is exactly the sort of jewel for family entertainment that we hope for. Where it truly is fun for the whole family. From the little kid to the grandparents. My Dad is sixty and he feels this is the best film of the summer, most of the AICN crew that was there agrees, I agree… but there was this guy sitting on the other side of my dad that was in his 80’s. And when he walked in and sat down next to dad with his wife… I just thought. Man, did that guy walk in the wrong theater? Dad says, he was laughing and then telling his wife about the gag. This old timer… he was truly one of us. And isn’t that what it is all about. It’s what unites geeks of all ages, a film like this. That is references the golden, silver and modern ages. That crosses generations to be truly fun for all.

That’s how great and how fun SKY HIGH is.