Sky High

Sky High (Director: Mike Mitchell)

Mitchell's recognizable films include Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo and last year's critical whipping boy Surviving Christmas. Written by Disney regulars Robert Schooley and Mark McCorkle ("Kim Possible," among others) and Paul Hernandez.

Sky High is, basically, a new Harry Potter movie with a comedic angle. It is the third movie to portray a family of superheroes within a year, after The Incredibles and this month's Fantastic Four. After watching the previews, I figured this might be mildly enjoyable, but with that Disney goofiness mucking things up a bit. Present is that classic flat Disney lighting that they incorporate into every family movie, seemingly being prepared for its inevitable run on The Disney Channel.

The story involves young Will Stronghold (Michael Angarano, who was in this year's Lords of Dogtown and seemingly made a career of being the "young" version of the older main character in movies such as Seabiscuit and Almost Famous), who has superhero parents, Steve "The Commander" (deliciously egotistical ham and cheese Kurt Russell) and Josie "Jetstream" (Kelly Preston). Will is about to enter Sky High, a school especially tailored towards would-be superheroes, and of course, since this is high school, the "lowly" sidekicks. Will doesn't display powers at first, so he is thrust into the sidekick classes, where he learns with smitten best friend Layla (cutie Danielle Panabaker) and a host of other kids whose only hope is to play "hero support" when they're older. Eventually, though, he does get his powers when fighting "rival" Warren Peace (Steven Strait), and gets the attention of the school hottie Gwen (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Meanwhile, there seems to be a plot against the Strongholds that is going to take all the power of the heroes and sidekicks to thwart.

The movie is highly engaging, a whole lot of fun, and funny. Kurt Russell seems to be having an absolute ball in his supporting role--his line readings are among some of the best of the year. There are cameos from Lynda "Wonder Woman" Carter and B-movie king Bruce Campbell. All the kids are good, too, especially Nicholas Braun as sidekick Zach, whose power is to glow in the dark. There are a lot of people from comedy teams in here, from Dave Foley and Kevin McDonald from "Kids in the Hall" to Broken Lizard alum Kevin Hefferman to cameos from "Mr. Show" regulars Tom Kenny and Jill Talley. Also, let's not forget Cloris Leachman, who's still real funny these days.

The movie could have easily been a smartass, "hip" reference-fest, but it embraces it's comic book inspirations and derives comedy out of situations rather than smarter-than-thou, knowing-nod, elbow-nudging comedy. That's refreshing this day and age, when the big problem with family movies trying to also appeal to adults always seem to lapse into pop culture references to get by. This is one of the best of the year so far.