Bruce Campbell: Sky High (2005) Review

This was usrprisingly an amazing movie, especially for something made for little kids by Disney. I would never have expected for two of my favorite actors to be in this film, Kurt Russel and Bruce Campbell, and although they play small roles their presence widely encompasses the entire film. The basis behind the film is that the world is full of superheroes and there is a school floating in the sky (hence the title of the film) that the superheroes' children attend in order to train to be caped crusaders.

The main reason that this film succeeds is that it does the superhero genre perfectly. In recent films like Batman Begins and the Spiderman franchise, the superheroes are slaves to realism, which has fragmented the entire genre of superhero films. Back in the 70s and 80s superheroes were funny and unrealistic, which is what the genre is known for. Sky High has their superheroes wearing underwear over tights and they have all kinds of different strange and silly powers. Some kids have the usual powers like flight and super strength, but others have the power to mulitply and even tranform into guinae pigs (which you think would be entirely useless, yet this film finds a way to utilize this power). This is the perfect superhero movie and restores my faith in this genre, for as good as movies like The Dark Knight and Iron Man are, they have sucked the life and humour out of the superhero genre and have replaced it with boring realism and gritty atmospheres, both of which are not what I think should be in a superhero film.

To get back to the point of Bruce Campbell, he plays the gym coach in this film which is a small part, however he remains both funny and intimidating in the role. Most people can relate to having a gym teacher that favors the athletic (or in this case more -super- powerful) students over the nin-athletic ones (or sidekicks). Kurt Rusell is also in the film playing the world's most famous superhero and delivers a very realistic fatherly role. He is the cliche supehero wearing a costume far too tight on him and with the power of super strength, kicking all the villain's asses. On the subject of villians, the film's main antagonist's reveal is a great twist and a very original plot point, the end being an incredibly silly and action fueled adventure.

The main theme of the film is that the main character hasn't gained his powers yet, which is an obvious puberty metaphor which has been seen in dozens of films. The reason this film does this well is that it isn't in the viewers face about it and uses lots of sublety. The other main theme the film focuses on is that their is a varied class structure between the heroes and the sidekicks (or Hero Support), which seperates the groups into obvious cliques. This leads to some amazing references, especially when the sidekicks are shown as not being allowed to do anything besides supporting their hero. The sidekicks are taught to speak catch phrases like: Holy _______, _______ Man; which I found absolutely hilarious as well as many of the other jokes in this film.

I highly recommend seeing this film instead of any of the current snore-fest superhero films that explain everything scientifically and give their villians motives. This movie has the bad guys as just being bad guys, no other explanations for their actions. This movie does a great job at everything it tries and is one of the best superhero films I have seen, perfectly utilizing the standards of the genre to tell a wonderfull story and capitalize on some amazing humour that the gerne used to be known for (before Joel Schumacher ruined everything by using only humour). Bruce Campbell plays a larger role in this film than most of the movies I plan on reviewing for this month, and his performance shines throughout the entire film. My favorite superhero film and definitely a film that all fans of the genre should see.

Rating: 8/10
Fanboy Rating: Holy Perfect 10, Reviewer Man