Kurt Russell Fights A Giant Robot
Now Playing: SKY HIGH
OK, let me get this out of the way. Kurt Russell fights a giant fucking robot. Kick Fucking Ass!

Who would have expected a charming, relatively low-budget ($35 million, according to the Internet Movie Database) Disney movie to be one of the best superhero adventures ever made? Considering SKY HIGH was directed by Mike Mitchell, whose work includes the stinkeroos DEUCE BIGALOW: MALE GIGOLO and SURVIVING CHRISTMAS, I doubt anybody did. Partnered with screenwriters with extensive Disney credentials, including the animated KIM POSSIBLE superhero series on the Disney Channel, Mitchell has crafted an amusing and exciting family movie that effectively mixes its heroics with more down-to-earth subjects befitting its teen characters.

14-year-old Will Stronghold (Michael Angarano) is attending his first day at Sky High, the same high school his parents attended. It’s a lot to live up to, considering A) it’s a special high school for kids with superpowers, B) Will’s parents are The Commander (Russell) and Jetstream (Kelly Preston), the world’s greatest superheroes, and C) Will, unlike his peers and unbeknownst to his folks, has no inherited powers of his own. Even his best pal Layla (Danielle Panabaker) has the ability to control plant life. At school, Will’s lack of superpowers relegates him to “sidekick” status, along with the girl who can transform herself into a guinea pig and the boy who can glow in the dark.

But what’s this? Turns out that Will is just a late bloomer, his latent super-strength bursting to the surface during a cafeteria brawl with a bully. Suddenly, Gwen (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the beautiful student body president, becomes interested in him, inviting Will to join the rest of the “heroes” and leave his sidekick friends in the dust. Meanwhile, one of his parents’ archenemies is surreptitiously spying on Will’s family in their “secret sanctum”, which doesn’t bode well for the Strongholds’ appearance at the upcoming Homecoming dance.

I loved everything about this movie, starting with the casting and including its judicious use of visual effects that serve the story and its characters, rather than the other way around. Even though the adult performers play second fiddle to the kids, all are a joy to watch. Few actors would be able to make the vainglorious Commander a likable character, but Russell, the most self-effacing of Hollywood movie stars, is wonderfully straight and confident, meshing well with the ageless Preston as his wife and crime-fighting partner. Bruce Campbell gets big laughs as Boomer, the arrogant gym teacher (“Is that your power? Buttkissery?”); Hollywood’s failure to find a use for his comic talent borders on criminal.

SKY HIGH is one of Disney’s most accomplished live-action features in some time, a fantasy that both kids and their parents can enjoy together. Mitchell and his writers have a firm grasp on the way superhero comic books used to be--fast, colorful fun--rather than the dark, violent dirges that have inspired downbeat pictures like DAREDEVIL and the X-MEN franchise. The director also gets the utmost from his special effects budget, staging cute scenes of a flying school bus and major superhero battles with equal panache. Nobody is seriously injured, the bad guys get their just desserts, and everyone lives happily ever after. Who says comic book movies have to be all doom and gloom?

Former Wonder Woman Lynda Carter as the principal, Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Cloris Leachman and Broken Lizard’s Kevin Heffernan as a non-superpowered bus driver prop up the adult cast, while the winning juvenile co-stars include Kelly Vitz, Dee Jay Daniels and Stephen Strait.